Set in a Welsh settlement in 1850s Appalachia, a young girl becomes determined to find the sin eater after her grandmother's death.

As she prepares for her wedding, Christy receives an unexpected visitor. When a sudden storm hits, Christy becomes stranded in a nearby cabin and becomes sick with a high fever. As the storm passes and she recovers, the right decisions become clear.

Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Great Smokey Mountains, an elderly Christy returns to the long-abandoned mission where she once taught as a 19-year-old schoolteacher who floundered, but persevered in an isolated mountain community in the early 1900s. Her memories center around a time when change was coming to Cutter Gap--some for the better, some not, and all of it resisted by the locals.