Jonas, a 40 something Parisian, is still desperately in love with his ex-girlfriend Léa. When he knocks on her door to confess his feelings and she turns him down, he ends up at the café downstairs.
Inspiration strikes and he sits down to write her a long love letter, dodging everything he was supposed to do that day. What begins as a last attempt to get her back surprisingly turns into a vivid musing on the state of his life.
Over the course of a day, helped by a wisecracking bartender and an array of patrons from the neighborhood, Jonas has to face his past relationships, his uncertain future and, most of all, himself.
Civil War veteran Josiah Grey comes to a small town to be a gospel minister. In time he has a family and many friends, but he also finds friction with a few of his parishioners. A young doctor grates at what he feels is the parson's interference in the scientific treatment of patients, and a mine owner resents Grey's protection of an old sharecropper whose small plot of land stands in the way of his continued mining. Grey must face a public health crisis and a lynch mob as a result, all seen and described through the eyes and memory of Grey's young nephew John.