The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Jones, Edward P. All Aunt Hagar's Children. Amistad, 2006.

The collection of short stories begins with "In the Blink of God's Eye," which details the downfall of the marriage between Aubrey Patterson and Ruth Hawkins once Aubrey begins suspecting Ruth of carrying on affair with her coworker Earl. The next story, "Spanish in the Morning," follows an unnamed protagonist, a young Black girl from Washington, as she makes the difficult adjustment to a new predominantly white school. This is followed by "Resurrecting Methuselah," in which a man named Percival Channing discovers that he has a terminal case of breast cancer and he, his wife Anita, and his daughter Bethany struggle to deal with the grief of this revelation.

The fourth story, "Old Boys, Old Girls," follows a man named Caesar Matthews, who is sent to prison at a young age and struggles to acclimate both to life on the inside and to normal society when he is finally released as a middle-aged man. Next, the titular "All Aunt Hagar's Children" follows an unnamed narrator as he attempts (and fails) to successfully solve a murder case in which he suspects that the deceased was murdered by the husband of the woman he was having an affair with. This is followed by "A Poor Guatemalan Dreams of a Downtown in Peru," a story about a woman named Arlene Baxter who survives a horrific flooding disaster when she is a young girl only to encounter a series of people who have had similar near-death experiences as she moves through adulthood.

The next story in the collection is "Root Worker," which follows a Black woman named Dr. Glynnis Holloway as she returns home to care for her ailing mother only to find both her pride and her beliefs as a medical practitioner challenged by her mother's root worker, Dr. Imogene, who seeks to heal Glynnis' mother through a series of herbal treatments. This is followed by "Common Law," which tracks a toxic relationship between two young lovers, Kenyon Morrison and Georgia Evans, and the reactions of their neighbors as the relationship between them becomes increasingly prone to domestic abuse.

"Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a Little Sister" details the story of Adam Robinson, a young runaway who is returned to the custody of his grandparents and struggles to adapt to his new family while harboring nostalgia for the foster homes in which he was raised. "The Devil Swims Across the Anacostia River" focuses on an encounter that a woman named Laverne Shepherd has in a Safeway grocery store with the Devil, who makes her question her faith and taunts her by insisting that a miracle Laverne watched her grandmother perform was in fact only a "trick." "Blindsided," the next story, is about Roxanne Stapleton, a beautiful woman who suddenly goes blind while riding a bus home and is forced to reckon with the implications of having structured her entire lifestyle around her physical beauty.

"A Rich Man" is the story of Horace Perkins, an elderly man whose sex drive is rejuvenated after his wife's death and who makes a series of bad decisions that leads him to be arrested for harboring a number of young women that are dealing drugs out of his apartment. "Bad Neighbors" details the relationship between the Bennington family, a lower-class Black family, and their more affluent neighbors, specifically through the love triangle between Derek Bennington, Sharon Palmer, and Terence Stagg, the latter of whom is from a significantly more privileged background than Derek. The final story in the collection, "Tapestry," explores a series of alternative timelines in the life of Anne Perry, a young woman from Mississippi who impulsively marries a man named George Carter and relocates to Washington.