A New York playwright is summoned to Ireland to bury his father. While at his boyhood home, he encounters his father's spirit and relives memories both pleasant and not.

An aging school teacher (Lansbury) at a Catholic grammar school in Minnesota questions her life's existence when she has to start battling a new bishop (Prosky). As a result she retires and moves to Ireland where she seeks an admirer (Elliott) with whom she has been corresponding for five years.

A young woman, Tara Maguire (Robin Wright) scandalizes her provincial Irish village in the 1950s by having a baby out of a wedlock, and refusing to name the father. She has a rare beauty and every man in town desires her, especially Sergeant Hegarty (Albert Finney). The arrival of a dramatic troupe stirs things up even more, especially when she falls in love with one f the "Playboys", Tom Casey (Aidan Quinn).

Milly and her friends have been going on holiday together ever since they've known each other. This summer they return to one of their favourite haunts, a beautiful Irish country hotel. It's a place full of fond memories for all of them, but on this occasion their sense of ease and comfort is destroyed when a terrible secret is revealed.

A woman returns to Belfast after ten years in England and becomes involved in the Maze prison protest.

Belfast 1972: The politically naive Bernie is trying to bring up a normal family in less than normal surroundings. Her best friend is accidentally shot dead by the IRA, and her neighbours are constantly raided by the army. In this climate of fear she stands up and condemns the murders. Criticising both factions, her call for a ceasefire is interpreted as an attack against the IRA, and as her peace movement takes momentum, she and her family are placed in the frontline.

'One of your Popes had a great thing to say once. He had been listening to some music by Palestrina with Palestrina himself. He said to him, " The law, my dear Palestrina, ought to employ your music to lead hardened criminals to repentance".'

When some Belfast children find out that city planners intend to "develop" a wooded area called the Glen that the girls use as a retreat from the pressures of city life, they decide to fight back - but in their own way.