In the coal-mining country of Western Pennsylvania outside of Pittsburgh, the fictional locale of Jolly Mount is home to Shae-Lynn Penrose.
Two years ago, five of her miner friends were catapulted to media stardom when they were rescued after surviving four days trapped in a mine.
As the men struggle to come to terms with their ordeal, along with the fallout of their short-lived celebrity, Shae-Lynn finds herself facing her relationship with her brutal father, her conflicted passion for one of the miners, and the hidden identity of the man who fathered her son.
A former police officer with a closet full of miniskirts, a recklessly sharp tongue, and a tendency to deal with men by either beating them up or taking them to bed, she has spent years carving out a life for herself and her son in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, the coal-mining town where she grew up.
When the younger sister Shae-Lyn thought was dead arrives on her doorstep followed closely by a gun-wielding Russian gangster, a shady New York lawyer, and a desperate Connecticut housewife, Shae-Lynn is forced to grapple with the horrible truth she discovers about the life her sister's been living, and one ominous question: will her return result in a monstrous act of greed, or one of sacrifice?