Claire makes her living telling others how to manage their lives and careers, but loses most of  her identity through credit card hijacking and a fraudulent loan that create conflict with her irate husband. He kicks her out of their comfortable north Atlanta home; Claire has no option but to flee to the northwest Georgia mountains. She claims a now-deserted trailer on the Alabama side of Lookout Mountain. A journey into family roots—Irish and Italian immigrants working coal and iron furnaces in the South’s bid to industrialize after the Civil War—turns up very surprising stories about Claire’s birth, shaking Claire’s sense of herself even more. She struggles for her true identity in the wildness of mountain ledges and waterfalls.