A novel of a dysfunctional family in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town. The mother is in jail for killing the father and the four children are on their own. They are supported by the eldest, Harley Altmyer, 20, who is having an affair with the mother of a friend of his sister.

In the town of Coal Run, the local deputy, Ivan Zoschenko, a permanently-injured one-time football legend branded for life as "The Great Ivan Z," spends a week seemingly preparing for an old teammate's imminent release from prison. He is surrounded by a rich cast of characters: his wise and comic ex-beauty-queen sister; his former idol, Val Claypool; and the young woman whose life he changed forever. During the events of this week, Ivan Confronts...

Shae-Lynn Penrose has spent years building a life for herself and her son in Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, the tiny coal-mining town in which she grew up, but her life is thrown into disarray by the arrival of the younger sister she had thought dead.