New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.

Yellowbird lives in the ruins of an old house. He lacks the confidence to leave his home, no matter how much Bug, his labybird friend, tries to convince him to go out into the world. Attempts to toughen him up have had little success, so Bug seizes an opportunity that leaves Yellowbird unexpectedly finding himself the new leader of the flock that is migrating to Africa. Still, lacking faith in his own abilities and with danger and imminent failure lurking around every corner, our feathered hero is forced to either find the strength required to work with the team or bow out and stay hidden away forever.

When Sarah Cain, a self-involved big-city newspaper columnist, travels to Pennsylvania for the funeral of her Amish sister, she soon discovers that she is the legal guardian of her five Amish nieces and nephews. Rather than choose to move to Lancaster County to finish raising them there herself, or let them be separated by the foster care system, Sarah decides to take them with her back to Portland where she believes she can make a new life for them. However, she soon realizes that the modern world has forced them to compromise who they are, and that she has moved them there for all the wrong reasons - a motive which is soon exposed - because secrets can really never be kept secret. In order to find her own redemption, she knows she must make a choice to give them back their lives in Amish Country. And whether she remains part of their lives will have a lot to do with how much she has grown to love them.