"Once, in a tiny village in India, there was a young boy who loved to paint. He lived with his grandfather, who taught him to paint with his fingers, to make paints from marigolds and brushes made from jasmine flowers. Sometimes, the village children would watch them painting together, and the boy's grandfather would invite them to join in. They didn't have much, but they had each other. After his grandfather dies, the boy notices a little box wrapped...

In the aftermath of a tornado that has devastated her hometown of Elizabeth, Missouri, sixteen-year-old Jersey Cameron struggles to overcome her grief as she is sent to live with her only surviving relatives.

During her sophomore year, Jessica develops a relationship with Vivi which helps her deal with the anger she has felt since her father's death, only to be overwhelmed again when Vivi dies during their senior year.

In 1936, three children meet at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans in New York State, and while not all three are orphans, they are all dealing with grief and loss which together, along with the help of a sympathetic staff member and the boxing matches of Joe Louis, they manage to overcome. Includes author's notes.

On Christmas Eve, an old farmer whose wife has died acquires new hope after helping a pregnant mare in a snowstorm.

Henry (Rabbit) Angstrom is 26, an ex-basketball star who is tired of his pregnant wife. So he runs away with a prostitute but returns home at the birth of his child. The baby's accidental death ends the marriage.

"Lucas Goodgame lives in Majestic, Pennsylvania, a quaint suburb that has been torn apart by a recent tragedy. Everyone in Majestic sees Lucas as a hero -- everyone, that is, except Lucas himself. Insisting that his deceased wife, Darcy, visits him every night in the form of an angel, Lucas spends his time writing letters to his former Jungian analyst, Karl. It is only when Eli, an eighteen-year-old young man whom the community has ostracized, begins...

After her father, brother, and sister are killed in a plane crash, twelve-year-old Daralynn's life in tiny Digginsville, Missouri, proceeds as her mother turns angry and embittered, her grandmother becomes senile, and her flamboyant aunt continues to run the Summer Sunset Retirement Home for Distinguished Gentlemen, while being courted by the owner of the town's new crematorium.

The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Road returns with the second volume of The Passenger series: Stella Maris is an intimate portrait of grief and longing, as a young woman in a psychiatric facility seeks to understand her own existence. 1972, BLACK RIVER FALLS, WISCONSIN: Alicia Western, twenty years old, with forty thousand dollars in a plastic bag, admits herself to the hospital. A doctoral candidate in mathematics at the University...

With the help of her cousin and their friends, Danna scours the city, searching for her grandfather's favorite foods and hoping the remembered flavors will bring back his memories.