In The Wild Palms, subsequently titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, William Faulkner interweaves two stories. In the story Wild Palms, it's New Orleans 1937. A man and a woman embark on a headlong flight into the wilderness of illicit passion, fleeing her husband and the temptations of respectability. In the story Old Man, the setting is Mississippi ten years earlier where a convict sets forth across a flooded river, risking his own chance at freedom to rescue a pregnant woman.

The two interwoven separate stories are presented so that they each climax with their final chapter, one with a happy ending and one with a sad ending.