In the 1980s in Summersville, West Virginia, a town with a dying coal industry and a burgeoning tourism industry, a whitewater rafting accident results in the death of a high school aged girl and her father. The tour guide responsible becomes mad with grief and obsession; a year later, when he tells a story of what really happened that day, it's unclear what's reality and what's fiction.

A private schoolteacher in America invites a friend and fellow European exile to her school dinner. In a setting of wealth and prestige, she witnesses how the former countess maintains a façade of class and poise despite her deep suffering.