Charlie Asher, a neurotic and anxious hypochondriac who hates change, confronts the challenges of being a widower and a single parent when his wife dies of a freak medical condition on the day his new daughter, Sophie, is born.

Oliver Milliron answers an ad for a housekeeper named Rose from Minneapolis, who arrives with her unconventional brother, Morrie, in tow.

Cody Gunner returns to his family's ranch to decide what he wants to do with the rest of his life, and is surprised to find his brother, Carl Joseph, who has Downs Syndrome, thriving thanks to Elle Dalton's independent living program, and as he learns more about the program, Cody begins to wonder if Elle might be able to heal his own broken heart.

A request by a young poet to see an archive of letters written by T.S. Eliot, unsettles librarian Matthias's composure and forces him to confront his painful memories of his relationship with Judith in the years after World War II.

Henry Dorn, recently widowed, decides to travel to Amsterdam by ship, but an encounter with Lydia Pearce, a young woman on the ship, leads to an unexpected romantic affair that troubles Henry's thoughts about the loss of his wife and his uneasy relationship with his son.

Jane Porter leaves her upscale New York City bakery to return to Twin Rivers, Rhode Island, to help care for her ailing mother, where she finds the secret of her past complicated by her growing attraction to widowed apple grower Dylan Chadwick.

Major Ernest Pettigrew, having retired to a quiet life in Edgecombe St. Mary, raises a few eyebrows in the small English village when he begins a relationship with widow Mrs. Jasmina Ali, a Pakistani shopkeeper.

Henry Lee, a Chinese-American in Seattle, loses his wife to cancer and recalls his youth, when he and his Japanese-American friend, Keiko, spent time together during WWII--before Keiko and her family were interred at a camp--and deals with generational difficulties between himself and his father and college-age son.

Twenty-year-old Katie Brenneman, having always quietly fancied Jonathan Lundy, jumps at the opportunity when the widower asks her to help him care for his two young daughters, but just when it seems like her dreams of a future with Jonathan are about to come true, a message arrives that threatens to expose secrets from a time in her life when she strayed far from the Amish way of life.