The power of simple faith is at the heart of this coming-of-age love story between a young girl who could barely read and write and a wounded soldier coming home from the "great war." When Dorie Kincaid took the job as a cleaning girl, she told the elegant woman who ran Coaltown boarding house that she was "not nothing." Miss Clara told her they would have to work on that...and it was there that she learned to read and grow into the strong young woman who would change lives in a way she had never dreamt. It was also in that Victorian house that Dorie met the miner's son, Elijah Caudill, a brokenhearted young soldier who turned to whiskey after coming home from World War I scarred, bitter, and disillusioned. Set in the wildly beautiful and rugged mountains of McDowell County, West Virginia, in 1918, the tale of Dorie Kincaid and Elijah Caudill is deeply woven into the fabric of a colorful historical period in Appalachian history. It was time when miner's fought for their lives with the coal barons, bootleggers ran wild in the mountains, blood feuds raged, and serpent handlers tempted God. Amidst this tumultuous world of hard times, tragedy, madness, and redemption, the abiding faith and gentle spirit of one girl touched the lives of many, making their world better and bringing her the love of which she had only imagined.