Someone in the rolling blue hills of the southwestern Appalachians must have mistakenly burned a branch of sassafras and cast a pall of bad luck over the unsuspecting mountaineers.

The small communities surrounding Elder Mountain in Kentucky are usually placid and sleepy. Busy logging camps, small farms, and hidden moonshine stills coexist in peace. But on the southeastern edge of the mountain, hidden in coves and hollers, lies a settlement of Melungeons, a dark-skinned group of people feared for their vibrant spirituality and unique connection to the earth. When a young white girl named Cissiah Hunter is brutally assaulted on Elder Mountain, her brothers immediately suspect a neighboring Melungeon man named Tom Crowe. Cissiah's subsequent suicide catapults them into a whirlwind of violence and revenge that will ultimately span three generations. When a young woman named Mabel marries the elder Hunter brother, the family's undying bitterness surrounding Cissiah's death becomes her burden, and she must figure out how to heal a decades-old wound.
Meanwhile, Tom Crowe and his wife Mirabel have fled Harlan County, narrowly escaping Kentucky with their lives, and find themselves in a small mountain settlement called Chimney Cove in the panhandle of Virginia. Feared and misunderstood by their new neighbors for their dark skin and mysterious origins, the Crowes lives in near-isolation in a holler high above the rest of the village, planning to spend the rest of their lives in safety and seclusion.
However, the outside world keeps intruding on their sanctum, and the past relentlessly seeks them out. The Cove residents learn about Mirabel's profound knowledge of herbs and healing and come to her with all of their physical and mental woes. Her handsome son Isaiah falls in love with the Cove preacher's granddaughter and constantly tests his parents? strict boundaries. Coal camps, influenza, world wars, and telephone lines creep into the Cove and threaten to overturn centuries-old traditions, as well as the Crowes? closely-guarded secrets. And a brooding man from Kentucky shows up in Chimney Cove, running from his past and trying desperately to envision a new future. His name is Lucas Gibbons, and his blossoming friendship with Mirabel reveals his surprising connection to her past, and to a young girl who haunts his nightmares.
Finally, a night of reckoning some forty-five years after Cissiah's death forces everyone to reconcile their past with their present, and understand the true nature of forgiveness.

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