In 1937, two documentarians from Ohio are dispatched to Kentucky's Appalachian wilderness to record what they find for the president's Works Progress Administration. For photographer Clay Havens, the assignment is his last chance to save his flagging career, so when he and his journalist partner are warned away from the remote Spooklight Holler outside of town, they set off eagerly in search of a headline story. In a life-changing encounter, Clay meets Jubilee Buford, whose skin is a shocking shade of blue. From this happenstance meeting between a woman who has been persecuted her whole life, and a man accustomed to keeping himself at lens distance from others, there is a chance for genuine kinship—but also betrayal.