Meg Sullivan is fresh out of journalism school and hell-bent on exposing wrongdoing when she arrives in a Rhode Island town for her first newspaper job in the post-Watergate summer of 1977. While covering a mysterious string of textile mill fires, she begins to suspect there is more smoldering beneath the surface of this sleepy community than meets the eye-and that discovery puts her life at risk. Meg is joined in her quest by Eric Fields, a young community activist trying to help the marginalized local residents endangered by the fires. Together they struggle to find the truth, stay alive and navigate their first real experience with love.