The Allegheny Mountains hold dark secrets and primal joy. Annie, who fled her home in the mountains and moved to California, returns again to live on the farm owned by her estranged husband. She settles near her friend Clare, whose feral ways are as protective as they are provocative, trying to find her way in this ancient community untroubled by modern law.

When she decides to venture into the horse business, she naively brings together an incendiary mix of race and values. Dangerously optimistic, she refuses to listen to Jack, the boy who travels between the Holler and Annie's farm when he warns her, "People don't give up their hates easy."

Annie continues to hang onto hope while houses burn, horses run wild, and the sun blasts the land, turning it to tinder. It is Clare who finally teaches her that people are who they are, that wanting doesn't always make it so, and in accepting this, she might find freedom.