A college coed has been found in the Appalachian Mountains with her throat cut and a message carved into her stomach. Sylvie Presley was working for an environmental group investigating a powerful energy company involved in mountaintop removal, but the police think she was killed by local meth dealers. Now her cousin, Anna Jassey, the only one who knows the truth, must prove what really happened and get to the killers before they get to her. But Anna is mentally ill and an addict and no one believes her. Then she meets Elias Kraft, professor of English, whose wife was killed in the Virginia Tech massacre. Threatened, shot at, and locked up, the girl from Grundy and the grieving man forge an unusual relationship while they confront their own personal demons and the destruction of the American wilderness, dark seams that lie beneath the American Dream.