A physically and emotionally damaged woman is reunited with her husband, Joe. Sixteen years earlier, while being chased by the law, Joe plunged the family car off a dark mountain road with Chrystal and their young son inside. Chrystal was left behind with a broken neck, Joe was sent to prison, and the boy was never found. Still inhabited by pain all these years later, Chrystal faces Joe, who has returned home from prison seeking to put back together the life that no longer exists. Together they must confront the past in order to discover their future. As Chrystal and Joe slowly reach out to one another, events once again conspire to tear them apart. Chrystals feisty mother, Gladys, disapproves of Joe and his return. An old enemy named Snake, a gnarly, crank-snorting drug dealer, sees Joe as a threat and seeks to reel him in or take him out. Into this world of poverty, drugs, and hillbilly hijinks comes Kalid, a blind African-American musicologist from Chicago who is studying the native mountain music of the region. It is through Kalid that Chrystal rekindles her forgotten love of her mountain roots, the mysteries of the land--its poetry, magic, music and history. But it is only through Joe, and his astonishing gesture, that Chrystal is able to truly renew her broken spirit.