Hammerton is a mining town in West Virginia. Built in a naturally formed crater, it is only accessible via a train tunnel. A mine collapse in the late nineteen forties saw the community reduced to poverty. Rather than leave the only community they had ever known and fearing the outside world, they chose to live on government welfare. A young boy, having lost his father and brother in the collapse, was sent out into the world at the tender age of seventeen by his grieving mother. His return upon her death twenty-five years later, sees him thrust back into the same bigotry and ignorance he thought he had left behind. A major gas leak and some startling evidence he finds helps to unlock some of the town's mysteries and also to re-examine his own life.