Ave Maria Mulligan has lived her whole life in tiny Big Stone Gap, a picturesque coal-mining town nestled in the hollers of southwestern Virginia. When she's not making deliveries from her family's pharmacy to far-flung neighbors, Ave Maria directs the annual outdoor drama festival, keeps chaste company with her longtime beau, Theodore, and exchanges good-natured barbs with local hunk Jack MacChesney.

Seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly sets out to track down her father who put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared. If she fails to find him, she and her family will be turned out into the Ozark woods. Challenging her outlaw kin's code of silence and risking her life, Ree hacks through the lies, evasions, and threats offered up by her relatives and begins to piece together the truth.