Following a mining disaster in March of 1962, the small coal town of Starksburg and the area population had to reshape their lives. The coal mine was sealed, and an entire town was left with little. So this is a story about the dispersion of people throughout the eastern United States.

One person can make a tremendous difference in tragedy, and that person was Lucy Blackburn, a special teacher at the local high school. The book follows the resilience of a few families. It follows them as they deal with the aftermath of this tragedy. This book tells us about those people and includes some of the history of the mining and railroad industry in the southern mountains of the Appalachian region.

The historical aspects of this book of fiction are approximations about the development of the coal industry, the railroad industry, period news, and the Vietnam conflict.

Lucy Blackburn and her dad are self-appointed guidance counselors and mentors for some of the characters of the bituminous coal mining area around Bluefield, Virginia, and Bluefield, West Virginia, because the state line runs through the town, splitting it between the town limits.

Some of the settings in the story are real, and some of the towns, cities, and counties names have been changed for literary purposes. Starksburg is not a real town on the West Virginia and Virginia border. In total, anything about the town of Starksburg is fiction.