A high school girl nearly drowns during a bicycle "tour for the cure" for breast cancer. A father checks his mentally ill son into the emergency room. A lawyer reexamines his past and present in light of a horrific car crash that killed three high school classmates. These long and short stories all focus upon events which transcend the characters' day-to-day existences, events which move them towards new states of understanding or being, towards new lives which will emerge to take the place of the old.