An Early Frost

The story of the discovery of the AIDS epidemic and the political infighting of the scientific community hampering the early fight with it.

Erik, a loner, finds a friend in Dexter, an eleven-year-old boy with AIDS. They vow to find a cure for AIDS together and save Dexter's life in an eventful summer.

David, a naive graduate student, has volunteered to work as a 'buddy' for people dying of AIDS. Assigned to the intensely political Robert, a lifelong activist whose friends and family have abandoned him following his diagnosis, the two men, each with notably different world views, soon discover common bonds, as David's inner activist awakens and Robert's need for emotional release is fulfilled.

When Nick, who has Asperger's syndrome, struggles to carry on after the death of his brother Chaz, Chaz's best friend Randy takes Nick under his wing.

Bobby Griffith was his mother's favorite son, the perfect all-American boy growing up under deeply religious influences in Walnut Creek, California. Bobby was also gay. Struggling with a conflict no one knew of, much less understood, Bobby finally came out to his family.

A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.

Willy Loman, an aging, failing salesman, struggles to accept reality and his failure to achieve the American Dream.

Milly and Louis, and their recently-widowed mom, Charlene, move to a new neighborhood. Once there, they all deal with a variety of personal problems, but Milly finds a friend in Eric, her autistic next door neighbor. Eric has a fascination with flight, and as the story progresses, he exerts an enthralling force of change on all those around him.

Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.

Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.

Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.

Retired farmer and widower Alvin Straight learns one day that his estranged brother Lyle has suffered a severe stroke. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. He then has the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.