It's the Midlands Chapter of the Institute of Embalmers Ladies' Night Dinner Dance, and nineteen-year-old William Lavery is taking Gloria in her sequined evening gown. But as the gentlemen sip their whiskey and smoke their post-dinner cigarettes a telegram delivers news of a tragedy. An event so terrible it will shake the nation. It is October 1966 and a landslide at a coal mine has buried a school. William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job, and will be—although he's yet to know it—a choice that threatens to sacrifice his own happiness in his desire to help others. This beautiful, heart-wrenching hope-restoring novel is a celebration of the power of community, love forged in pain, and the redemption that comes from deep kindness in the face of terrible loss.