No stranger to balancing an intensely demanding work schedule with the stresses of keeping her family together, AJ Palladino now faces another challenge: she is leaving her young son home with her ailing parents so that she can travel to the site of a new case involving a nuclear power plant in peril.

Ten years ago, pregnant teenager Angela Joy Palladino fled her hometown of Scotia, West Virginia, and became an environmental activist. Now, desperate for money, she takes on a project that will force her to return to Scotia and confront everything she thought she had left behind.