Conflicted hearts longing for human connection populate these stories while whispers from vivid landscapes beg that these troubled characters turn their searches inward.

The title story features an aged Susquehanna ferryman, Randolf, piloting an Amish wedding party. Mid-river, the ferry snags on a weir. A frightened mare bolts from the deck, tangling in her traces. As Randolf labors to save the ferry, he’s forced to confront not only the remorse he’s carried for persuading his late wife to abandon her art, but his years denying a much larger toll. A beautiful reflection on a couple’s grief, guilt, and awakenings in the aftermath of a stillbirth.

In Not 2B, a down-on-his-luck body man and dirt track driver is in search of redemption for the on-track tragedy that made him the scorn and scapegoat of 800 Saturday night race fans.

Nancy depicts a raw Pennsylvania lumbering crew and the female African American goat farmer upon whom they foist an influenza-ridden society man who’d shown up at their camp door.

In The Wagon Woman, a story of the irony of highways simultaneously feeding and destroying small towns, an EMT arrives at his most tragic medical incident to discover the aftershock of an illicit love affair he is embroiled in.

In Mainland, Robin, an ecology student, is doing graduate fieldwork in Maine. On an evening out, a marine biologist named Susan persuades Robin to join her and three men for an impromptu party on a cobblestone beach. Abandoned with a drunk lobsterman and saving herself from a sexual assault, Robin comes to realize the prerogative of her own fertility and identity.