The book is set in Appalachia after the Great Recession and follows third-year associate Samantha Kofer after the Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, when she becomes a legal clinic intern in Virginia's coal mining country.

[1] Samantha Kofer is a lawyer at a major New York City law firm, which is hit hard at the onset of the Great Recession.

She finds a job with a woman named Mattie, who runs a legal aid firm in the town of Brady.

Several employees of the coal mines work themselves until they are sick and the businesses have cut corners on safety measures, resulting in a few deaths.

Sam meets Donovan's brother Jeff, who acquired some important documents from the coal businesses, showing that the companies' owners deliberately allowed the sludge from the mines to runoff into the rivers.