A deaf teenager enters a specialized boarding school where, to survive, he becomes part of a wild organization - the tribe. His love for one of the concubines will unwillingly lead him to break all the unwritten rules within the Tribe's hierarchy.

Lawyer Andrew Garfield has a love affair with Jane, a deaf woman. A day when Jane's husband comes home early and catches them, Andrew shoots him. The police think Jane killed her husband and wants Andrew to defend her in court. Now he has to defend her, without drawing suspicion upon himself, and at the same time, this may be the big case he needs to improve his career.

Mandy was born deaf and has been mute for all of her life. Her parents believe she is able to speak if she can only be taught and so enrol her with a special teacher.

Dr. Robert Richardson, a dedicated young general practitioner, seeks to establish himself in an isolated fishing village on Cape Breton Island off the Nova Scotia coast. The population is poor and the struggling physician generally gets paid for his efforts in barter. When he meets Belinda McDonald, a young deaf mute callously dismissed by family and neighbors as "the dummy," he alone senses her innate intelligence. He overcomes the initial skepticism of her flinty, gruff father and indifferently cold aunt, who operate a hardscrabble grist mill and farm, and devotes himself to teaching the young girl sign language and lip-reading. Hopes are even raised that she might even eventually qualify for a medical procedure that might improve her condition. Her optimism is crushed, however, when she raped by Locky McCormick, a brutish local fisherman. Traumatized, she is unable to communicate the outrage to her family...

Following the death of her father, a teenage Dot moves into the home of her godparents and their teenage daughter Nina. Dot arrives wrapped up in the silence of being deaf-mute. She finds a different kind of silence waiting for her in her new home, for this home is a place with a dark secret involving Nina and her father. At first, Dot and Nina seem to be polar opposites. However, they gradually realize how much they have in common. Bringing them together catalyzes a series of events in which both reveal their secrets and shed their double lives. A violent consummation almost destroys them. Yet they find hope for the future in the quiet after the storm.

The Stone family unites in common cause when their favorite son brings his uptight girlfriend home for the Christmas holiday, with plans of proposing. Overwhelmed by the hostile reception, she begs her sister to join her for emotional support, triggering further complications.