While New York City sizzles in early summer humidity, prosecutor Butch Karp and his family are taking refuge in their farmhouse on Long Island. The tide quickly changes when the Karps learn that their beachside neighbours, Rose and Ralph Heeney - a West Virginia coal mine union leader - have been brutally murdered back home in McCullensburg. Irresistible force meets immovable object when the West Virginia governor appoints Karp special prosecutor to bring justice to the corrupt town, its union chieftain, and his band of merry thugs. Marlene joins Karp as he searches for the killers and works to save his own family from an evil that runs as deep as the mines that fuel it.