The son of Indian immigrants born in America wants to fit in with fellow New Yorkers, but his family is unwilling to let go of their traditional ways.

Chuyia, an Indian girl that is married and widowed at eight years old, is sent away to a home where Hindu widows must live in penitence. Her feisty presence affects the other residents, forcing each to confront their faith and society's prejudices.

As Tolstoy asserted, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This unhappy family has never confronted its unhappiness: Sweetie, so called since childhood, the apple of her father Bob's eye and the bane of her mother Flo's smothered existence. Her sister Kay is shy, superstitious, and sexually repressed where Sweetie is loud, slovenly, and quite possibly mentally ill. The family has managed to lead relatively normal lives by denying their bizarre...

A down-and-out silver miner raising a son, self-made oilman Daniel Plainview has a voracious appetite for oil, and it turns him into a California tycoon in the early years of the 20th century. Getting the oil from the ground is an intensely physical process that later broadens into Plainview's equally indomitable urge to control land and power. Along the way, Plainview deals with a mighty derrick fire, a visit from a long-lost brother, the ongoing...

Colin, a young rebel and promising distance runner, is chosen to represent his reform school in a track race. However, the opposition for Colin isn't another runner, it's the Establishment.