ERICA BROWN, a 59-year-old Deputy Director of the EPA, has a near-obsessive devotion to nature and the environment. It began when she watched Vasgar Coal strip mine a mountain into rubble near her grandparents' home in Eastern Kentucky. When she discovers a corrupt approval signed by her closest colleague (to allow a mountaintop-removal mine by Vasgar), she reports him. The director immediately reassigns her to a primitive wastewater facility in small-town Louisiana. Now she must find a new way to fight for the environment and combat EPA corruption.