The story of three worlds within a small Appalachian community: that of Deanna Wolfe, a Park Service employee who lives alone on the mountain; of Lusa Landowski, who came from the city to live on a farm out of love and must now come to understand her relationship to the land and the family that has tended it for generations; and of two neighbors, one feuding and one a free spirit, who forge a path toward learning about each other. These stories, separate and yet interwoven by the community in which all--even the reclusive Deanna--live, also have at their center the interconnectedness of the human world and the natural one.