In Bridgeport, a fictional college town in western New York, the residents of The Grand Scheme of Things work against their limitations. Through illness, infidelities, enduring connection, and triumph, these characters and their friends, lovers, and children fight for themselves and each other through tragic, curious, or surreal circumstances.

In "The Wash," when a woman's son is drowned by a dog in the Erie Canal, she finds comfort in the most surprising place.

The novella "Cold Storage," set against the backdrop of campus Vietnam protests in 1971, portrays teenaged June as she leaves St. Barnabas Home for Unwed Mothers and considers returning to college, but arrives home to find her parents divorcing and her mother unrecognizably ill.

In "You Hear Night Sounds," a college student inherits a pet turkey from his late father-the only one who ever heard his disturbing confession.

Though the village in The Grand Scheme of Things is small, what unravels has universal, historic, and lasting implications. These are stories of protest and growth, of loss and surrender, of acceptance and compromise.