mary margaret "mame" blackwell yearns for a way out of the sleepy little town of beckley. after a coal mine explosion kills her father in 1922, pretty little mame is not willing to accept her mother's hardscrabble plan for farming burley tobacco in rural west virginia, but trying to survive in a nearly deserted coal mining town without a father in the early 1900s is anything but easy. when mame eagerly leaves home on her first trip to charleston at age 19, she meets tobacco heir clint paddington and sees her chance to move up in the world. unaware at first of their families' shared connection to tragedy, mame makes wild, naïve choices that expose both families to even deeper dangers for generations to come. watch the damage escalate in this gritty southern saga as ambition and romance go awry, adding betrayal, kidnapping, rape, and even murder to the mining tragedy. do children inherit the sins of their fathers? do dark forces walk the earth? will mame's secrets push her to madness? or will her solid roots in the coal mining country help her survive her mistakes, or, at least, be forgiven of them?