Things look good for Carrie Marie Mullins, a Kentucky bluegrass fiddler and the only woman in the Hawktown Road band. She loves the wild music and the late hours. She also loves Cap Dunlap, Hawktown's roughly handsome lead guitarist - she fell hard for him the minute she set eyes on him. But she knows that Cap's not a one-woman kind of man, so "she stomps down that feeling with her cute cowboy boots." And almost succeeds.

Without warning, Carrie's beloved daughter, five-year-old Molly, dies in a senseless accident. We meet Carrie a month later, as she recuperates on a ridgy, drought-struck farm.

Struggling with loss and her own sanity, cared for by Ona and Ruth, two wonderfully sustaining older women who understand the healing power of the day-to-day, she gradually reaches to take hold of the fact of her life: her guilt and her grief; the cost of her long obsession with Cap; the responsibilities and privileges of her gift for that life-giving music.