Widowed Sadie Langley faces loneliness and financial ruin in a small community at the edge of the New River Gorge wilderness. She enters the working world and encounters both kindness and cruelty. Sadie finds the sudden socializing in the working world to be a chore until she is drawn out of her solitude by an unlikely but entertaining older man named Cyrus. She finds herself matching both wit and passion in an affair that polarizes the community. She is warned that a hot, quick fire will burn out too soon when she uncovers a secret affair in her family's past. She is grudgingly supported in her recklessness by her friend Blanche who sees heartache ahead, and by her first love and best friend, her cousin Duff. But despite the warnings, the lovers' intensity continues as they share both adventure and disgrace and Sadie is forced to move beyond her familiar rural world into the infancy of computers and technology. Against the backdrop of West Virginia's urgent and dangerous white water, towering mountains, and the spirits of a disappearing culture, Sadie continues the demanding affair while she shrewdly exploits her widowhood and her fascination with computers to build a career, gambling that enduring love may be found among the embers of a hot, quick fire.