Territory of Montana, 1885. For Miss Kathryn Blackford, death is only the beginning. Desperate to escape her miserable life as a coal-miner in Cinder, a dismal town nestled in the Rocky Mountains, she stages her own death so that she can start life anew—unbound, unrestricted, and free to do as she pleases. Just as she is about to leave Cinder forever, Miss Blackford unexpectedly crosses paths with the stubborn and spoiled Miss Elizabeth Lancaster, daughter of the proprietor of Cinder’s coalmine. For that reason alone, Miss Blackford is determined to hate her. It would have been easy for that hate to endure, too, were it not for the inconvenient events that brought the two so close together, setting them on a tumultuous journey marked each day with calamity, deceit, and troublesome attraction.