Mary Frances "Frankie" Lombard is fiercely in love with her family's sprawling apple orchard and the tangled web of family members who inhabit it. But she cannot help being haunted by the historical fact that some family members end up staying on the farm and others must leave. Change is inevitable, and threats of urbanization, disinheritance and college applications shake the foundation of Frankie's roots. As Frankie is forced to shed her childhood fantasies and face the possibility of losing the idyllic future she had envisioned for her family, she must decide whether loving something means clinging tightly or letting go.

Texas in the early 1900s was on the cusp of an oil boom that, unbeknownst to its residents, would spark a period of dramatic changes and economic growth. In the midst of this transformative time in Southern history, two unforgettable characters emerge and find their fates irrevocably intertwined: Samantha Gordon, the privileged heiress to the sprawling Las Tres Lomas cattle ranch, and Nathan Holloway, a sweet-natured and charming farm boy. As changes sweep the rustic countryside, Samantha and Nathan's connection drives this narrative compulsively forward as they love, lose and betray.

When Alison and Kyle meet in high school, it is both completely forgettable and utterly life-changing. Each has big dreams: Alison wants to be a great actress, while Kyle yearns for a life of service as a doctor in the third world. But as their fates rocket them apart, neither can fully let go of the past. And when their lives inevitably intersect, they must face each other in the revealing light of their decisions.

Set deep in the mountains of Virginia, the Grundy of Lee Smith’s youth was a place of coal miners, tent revivals, mountain music, drive-in theaters and her daddy’s dimestore. It was in that dimestore --- listening to customers and inventing adventures for the store’s dolls --- that she became a storyteller. Even when she was sent off to college to earn some “culture,” she understood that perhaps the richest culture she might ever know was the one she was driving away from --- and it’s a place that she never left behind.

It's 1838, and James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck --- in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the 50 apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. Fifteen years later, their youngest child, Robert, is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. But when Robert’s past makes an unexpected appearance, he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.

Brooklyn, 1947: In the midst of a blizzard, in a two-family brownstone, two babies are born minutes apart to two women. They are sisters by marriage with an impenetrable bond forged before and during that dramatic night. But as the years progress, small cracks start to appear, and their once-deep friendship begins to unravel. No one knows why, and no one can stop it. One misguided choice; one moment of tragedy. Heartbreak wars with happiness and almost --- but not quite --- wins.

Widowerhood at 33 and 12-hour workdays have left a gap in Charlie Goldwyn’s relationship with his quirky five-year-old son, Caleb. The only thing Charlie has going for him is his job at a prestigious law firm, where he is finally close to becoming a partner. But when a slight lapse in judgment at an office party leaves him humiliatingly unemployed, stuck at home with Caleb for the summer, and forced to face his own estranged father, Charlie starts to realize that there’s more to fatherhood than financially providing for his son, and more to being a son than overtaking his father’s successes.

It is 1937. Prue, an artist living a reclusive life by the sea, is visited by William Harrington, a British pilot she knew as a child in Jerusalem. Prue remembers an attraction between Harrington and Eleanora, the wife of a famous Jerusalem photographer, and the troubles that arose when Harrington learned Eleanora's husband was part of an underground group intent on removing the British. During his visit, Harrington reveals the truth behind what happened all those years ago, a truth that unravels Prue's world. Now she must follow the threads that lead her back to secrets long-ago buried in Jerusalem.

At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

Robert Hendricks, an established psychiatrist and author, has so bottled up memories of his own wartime past that he is nearly sunk into a life of depression. Out of the blue, a baffling letter arrives from Dr. Alexander Pereira, a neurologist and a World War I veteran who claims to be an admirer of Robert's published work. The letter brings Robert to the older man's home on a rocky, secluded island off the south of France, and into tempests of memories. As Robert's recollections pour forth, he's unsure whether they will lead to psychosis or redemption. But Dr. Pereira knows.