In 2019, Aleena Rowan receives a box of her father's desk diaries from the years he worked as a coal executive. She expects to find nothing more than the cost of business lunches and meeting notes. Instead, she finds a mysterious name, Sara, scrawled on a slip of paper in her father's handwriting.
In 1970, Frank Rowan meets Sara Stone while fishing on a frigid January day, and sees her again waiting tables at Otter Creek's only restaurant. Initially, Sara sees Frank as her ticket to a better life, but other forces compete with her dreams—like protecting her town from the increasingly perilous coal slurry dam.
In her debut novel, told from both sides of the coal industry, Isabel Reddy brings to life the conflicts and undercurrents of an Appalachian mining town on the eve of disaster.