A once-booming West Virginia rail town no longer has a working train. The residents left behind in this tiny hamlet look to the mountains that surround them on all sides: The outside world encroaches, and the buildings of the gilded past seem to crumble more every day. These are the stories of outsiders—the down and out. The characters in The Rope Swing yearn for that which seems so close but impossibly far, the world over the jagged peaks of the mountains.