Faye Longchamp is asked to run a an archaeology project to uncover the origins of an ethnic group of people called the Sujosa who have lived in Alabama's most remote hills for centuries. The home she is staying in catches fire and Faye survives, but her friend Carmen, the project historian, does not. A few days later, an eighteen-year old boy commits suicide by jumping from a cell phone tower that will bring the outside world into the Sujosa community. Faye investigates the two deaths and the oral histories of the Sujosa community.