When successful New York editor Jen Gibbs discovers a decaying slush-pile manuscript on her desk, she has no idea that the story of Sarra, a young mixed-race woman trapped in Appalachia at the turn of the twentieth century, will both take her on a journey and change her forever. Happy with her life in the city, and at the top of her career with a new job at Vida House Publishing, Jen has left her Appalachian past and twisted family ties far behind....

When his mother is killed in an automobile accident, high-schooler Josh decides to hitchhike across country, and finds himself trapped in a mysterious village somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains, among a group of people who call themselves Melungeons.

Tom Bridger, who is half Melungeon, left his small mountain community to escape the lingering prejudice against the mixed race group. Now, in the face of family tragedy, he has returned and taken on his father's job as a county sheriff's deputy. The bones of a Melungeon woman have surfaced and all evidence points to murder. The victim's poor family and the wealthy white family she married into scramble to protect their secrets from Tom's probing....