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Misha Marshall finds a body on the street near her home. She prays he is still alive.

Ebony Smith-Thomas suffered from lead poisoning as a toddler. Despite dire predictions, she thrived as an adolescent and young adult. Now 38, she has a tenuous hold on life.

BFBF storyteller Leyla Fern King shares chapter one in the story of Misha Marshall and her family. Misha — or Mama Misha as she is known to some — is a medical technician who has gone above and beyond to care for the people around her as well as far and wide.

As Steven Jones deals with joblessness, concern for his daughters’ safety, and a presidential election in the time of the pandemic, he thinks of Job, the Tower of Babel, Hannibal Lector, and, more hopefully, Wakanda.

Beverly Jones can hardly wait to get back to the neighborhood she knows and loves. It’s a neighborhood that’s hard to love and in the time of the pandemic even more difficult. “I don’t have time to be sick,” Jones said last month, “because I am helping everybody else.” But last week, Jones contracted COVID-19.

Kim Daniel has vivid and sweet memories from the day she went to the polls with her mother in November 1976. Though she has health issues that mostly keep her inside, she will roll the wellness dice on Nov. 3 and show up in person to cast her vote.

In chapter 2 of this pandemic saga, Steven Jones, beset with health issues, struggles to find his place in a teetering economy..

Nabali Khaled Salameh’s Crown Plaza serves as a case study of upended social and business norms in a crippled economy. It also represents the challenges that the pandemic has on a business that is indeed essential to a fragile community.

Kim Daniel harbors a modest dream. It was first born of youthful imagination, then deferred because of her fragile health and uncertain financial situation. She has now reimagined her dream, out of fear and desperation.