Dillon and Rachel are children living on their family land, the Homeplace. From the beginning, Dillon makes claims that he loves Rachel partially because she is the only one who has memories of his father. They are first cousins.
Rachel leaves the Homeplace to attend a nursing school, where she spends several years. Dillon enlists in the British army to fight against Hitler. Upon Rachel's graduation from nursing school, she and her friend Tommie Justice enlist as nurses in the war as well.
Rachel returns to find out that the Homeplace is no longer their land. They are reunited in Justice County. Rachel continues working there as a county nurse, and Dillon works for the mine while fighting for the union against the American Coal Company and Arthur Lee, who owns it. Arthur is an acquaintance of Rachel's because he dated her friend Tommie previously and introduced her to his friend Tony.
Rachel and Dillon continue to fight. Dillion wants to marry Rachel, but it is illegal to marry a first cousin. When the trouble with the coal company gets worse, Dillon asks that Rachel leave her job for the county, and help him in the fight against the coal companies.
Rachel ends up marrying Tony, an Italian man that Tommie and Arthur Lee set her up with. She has trouble having kids with Tony and continues to stay close to Dillon. Eventually, she has sex with Dillon and have a daughter, Jackie. This is kept quiet and Jackie believes until the very end that Tony is her father.
After Rachel and Tony finally divorce due to an unhappy marriage, Tony gets remarried and has trouble again having babies. Rachel fears that this will cause him suspicion of Jackie being his and that he will try to take her away.
At the break of dawn, the Buffalo Creek flood occurs. Jackie is left alone after the deaths of Tom and Dillon in the flood, and moves away, wanting to forget the place she called home.
