An extraordinary storyteller captures the beauty and cruelty of life in the Appalachian Mountains at the turn of the last century in this heart-wrenching tale of love and misfortune. There is a most unusual woman living in Gap Creek. People depend on her to slaughter the hogs and nurse the dying.
People are weak, and there is so much to do.
She is just a teenager when her little brother dies in her arms. That same year she marries and moves down into the valley where floods and fire and visions visit themselves on her, and con men and drunks and lawyers come calling. Julie and her husband discover that the modern world is complex and that it grinds ever on without pause or concern for their hard work. To survive, they must find out whether love can keep chaos and madness at bay. Julie and Hank's new life in the valley of Gap Creek in the last years of the nineteenth century is more complicated than the couple ever imagined.