Ronnie Fairchild hates his brother. He always has. Mick’s a bastard. A weight hanging heavy 'round everyone’s neck and a reminder of a wrong never made right.

But when their momma dies, leaving a final demand to find his daddy, Ronnie’s going to uncover a whole heap of trouble tracking him down. And when that bombastic journey leads him to a no-good Texan motel with his sorry-for-nothing brother laying wait to settle a debt, by God, there’s going to be hell to pay.

Blood history ain't nothing new in Hazard, Kentucky. Goes back as far as the coal runs deep, and the Fairchilds are just the tip of the mountain of bad that comes from those hills. As Ronnie sets out to make peace with what he's done, he'll have to confront the past acts of violence that led him to that motel parking lot.

A 60-year jaunt down memory lane, this sprawling honkey-tonk saga is chock-full of striking miners, mountain men, booze runners, gambling addicts, Dixie mafia-Mason-family dynasty, Nascar, Elvis crooners, natural disasters, gun thugs, unions, legends, railroad men, proper New York aristocracy running amok against always-been-here-hill-folk, Irish, Scottish, Gullah, red, black, and white, all of ‘em working for Davis Brother’s Mining collective in the '30s, '60s, and what would come with the aftermath of that blood history’s violence—the '90s. Some of it takes place elsewhere, like Texas, Georgia, and down country road divides, but the majority of it is rooted in Hazard, the most dangerous town in all of Kentucky.