The year is 1883 and following a whirlwind courtship, seventeen-year-old Copper Brown finds herself living in the bustling city of Lexington, KY, far away from her beloved mountain home, newly married to a man she barely knows. Having been raised to put her trust in God, Copper sets out to find a purpose for this new life that shéd never imagined.

Learning from the same mentor in spite of their disparate personalities, Darcy Whitt falls for an unscrupulous lawyer who plots to steal her family's land while her sister-in-law, Cara, struggles with sudden isolation in her rickety cabin.

Lilly Gray Corbett has just graduated from medical school and decided to accept an internship in the coal camp of Skip Rock, Kentucky. Her beau, Paul, is doing his residency in Boston and can't understand why Lilly would choose to work in a backwater town. But having grown up in the mountains, Lilly is drawn to the stubborn, superstitious people she encounters in Skip Rock-a town where people live hard and die harder and where women know their place....