This series of four stories follows the life of a couple through being friends as children to having a child. It starts with "Down Below" in a Wizard of Oz-like fantasy land and ends with "On the Bay" in the Chesapeake of Maryland. In-between are stories which encounter a homeless runaway experiencing an "Up Above" dissociation, and an experience "Across the Gulf" into a shamanic land, where the couple enter "un-time." We discover in these stories that the "magical realism" of childhood continues into adult life and has the hidden power to bring life.