These stories are about people on the edge, struggling to survive: a hit man confessing to his son, a hijacker confronting a salmon fisherman and his teen-aged daughter in the Pacific Northwest, San Francisco weed dealers in the midst of the 1980s AIDS epidemic, pot growers on an Indian reservation confronting a patch pirate, small time crooks and con artists, ex-cons, juvenile hall denizens, two little girls breaking into the church Poor Box, kickball-playing bullies, a desperate young woman attempting to steal her kids back from their adoptive parents, a young man escaping an abusive past, teenage welfare-moms being hassled by the cops, a young girl protecting her brothers from a violent father, a broke widow befriending a young bartender in a laundromat, a single mom with a jailed boyfriend who steals from rich club-hopping party girls, a mysterious older woman picking up a young drifter at the New Orleans Greyhound Bus Station and a young boy searching for mythical large-headed creatures on Halloween night.