Set in December 1944; a month after the Tennessee Valley Authority completed a portion of feeder lakes and dams that snake through Western North Carolina. Though court battles still linger, few remember the towns displaced or destroyed by the TVA, and it is rare that anyone recalls the disappearance of a small traveling carnival trapped on an abandoned highway by a deadly wall of floodwater. Of the forty or so performers, roustabouts and hands that enter the isolated and rugged valley, thirty days of injury, starvation and brutally cold winter weather reduce their number to three. When rescuers from the small town of Stillwell finally find the survivors, the murderous scene horrifies them.