Twenty-year-old Samuel Wilde has managed to survive living and working in a Canadian coal mining camp despite the daily dangers of cave-ins and poisonous coal dust. He longs to escape to a better life, but he's been in this business so long, he knows nothing else. When a cave-in kills one of his best friends, Sam can't stand the thought of going back into the mine. He catches a lucky break when a Seattle businessman offers him an escape from the drudgery and despair, and asks him to smuggle alcohol during America's Prohibition. Sam leaps at the opportunity and soon becomes engulfed in the shady world of bootlegging.
But it's not long before Sam discovers that the whiskey is only a front for something more sinister. Canisters of lethal weapons, confiscated from the Germans during World War I, are being held in a secret cache awaiting delivery to the highest bidder. This isn't what Sam signed up for, and now he has a choice to make, one that may very well be a matter of life or death.
Sweeping from the misery of the Canadian coal mines to Seattle's dark underbelly, Lucifer's Trumpet delves into one man's moral battle between right and wrong during one of the most tumultuous times in American history.