After her unfaithful husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce proves she can become independent and successful. However winning the approval of her spoiled daughter proves a greater challenge.

Through a series of flashbacks, four Chinese women born in America and their respective mothers born in feudal China explore their pasts.

With her husband Jack perpetually away at work, Margaret Hall raises her children virtually alone. Her teenage son is testing the waters of the adult world, and early one morning she wakes to find the dead body of his gay lover on the beach of their rural lakeside home. What would you do? What is rational and what do you do to protect ...

After marrying her long lost love, a pianist finds the relationship threatened by a wealthy composer who is besotted with her.

Cheated on, mistreated and stepped on, the women are holding their breath, waiting for the elusive "good man" to break a string of less-than-stellar lovers. Friends and confidants Vannah, Bernie, Glo and Robin talk it all out, determined to find a better way to breathe.