At the height of the industrial Gilded Age, amidst the blazing fires of the steel mill and black depths of the coal mine, the chase is on. Thomas Houghton, an inspector and enforcer for the feared and hated Pennsylvania Coal and Iron Police, pursues an elusive and legendary labor organizer and insurrectionist from coal town to steel mill amidst the backdrop of surging social tides in the late 1800s. From the glamorous hotels of the rich to the creaking shantytowns of the poor immigrants, Houghton threads his way through an arena of danger, violence, and seething unrest while also doing battle with his own ghosts. Houghton, a man haunted by his own brutality and his past as a Civil War combat veteran, driven by hatred for his own actions and contempt for his rich superiors, uses his own relentless determination to force his way through a churning, chaotic, and dangerous industrial world.
As Houghton inches closer to his quarry in May 1889, the rains pour down the steep hillsides as the city prepares for a Decoration Day parade and celebrations. Houghton chases the elusive Istvan Magursky from the thundering noise and hellish heat of the mills to the crowded confines of the mines, to the underworld of bare-knuckle brawling to the threat of back-alley knife fights in the simmering underground of a steel-making boomtown. Forces of rich and poor collide with unrelenting nature as the stakes escalate...along with the water running in the streets of downtown.