Eighteen-year-old Mazy Pelfrey prepares to leave her home in the Kentucky mountains for the genteel city of Lexington, where she’ll attend secretarial school. There she meets a charming young man from a wealthy family, Loyal Chambers. When Loyal sets his sights on her, Mazy begins to see that everything she’d ever wished to have is right before her eyes. The only hindrance to her budding romance is a former beau, Chanis Clay, the young sheriff she thought she’d left firmly behind.

Lilly Corbett Still has grown to love her life as the small-town doctor of Skip Rock, a tiny coal community in the Kentucky mountains. Though her husband, Tern, is away for a few months at a mining job, Lilly has her hands full with her patients and her younger sister visiting for the summer. Lilly turns to her good friend and neighbor, Armina, to help keep things in order --- until a mysterious chain of events leaves Armina bedridden and an abandoned baby on her doorstep.

Lilly Gray Corbett has just graduated from medical school and decided to accept an internship in the coal camp of Skip Rock, Kentucky. As Lilly becomes torn between joining her beau, Paul, in Boston and her love for the people of Skip Rock, she crosses paths with a handsome miner. Her attraction for him grows, even as she wrestles with her feelings and wonders what he’s hiding.