Environmental disaster looms as a mountain community's need for water comes into violent conflict with the power and greed of a Wall Street-backed gold mine operator. Colleen Fitzgerald's career and personal life unravel when she learns that the man she loved, a fellow gold-stock analyst, has died under suspicious circumstances at a mine site. Taking over his research at the Summitville Mine in the mountains of Southern Colorado, Colleen becomes enmeshed in the wiles of the mine's dangerously charismatic operator who will do anything to make his mine succeed. On her quest to understand why her love died, Colleen confronts the cataclysmic forces building at the mine—Wall-Street-fueled lust for financing, a farming community that needs water, the toxic brew of heavy metals and cyanide spilling from the mine and poisoning that water, radical local-autonomy groups, and violent environmentalist renegades. Facing the devastation caused by the clash of these forces, Colleen learns to care about others again, and rediscovers hope the hard way.