In 19th-century England, Bishop Hannay, a manipulative charmer, retains Jonathan Blair to find his daughter's fiance, a curate who has gone missing in the coal-mining town of Wigan. Blair soon discovers that Wigan is a town as dark and sooty as the mines in its bowels. The residents are full of the misdirected passion, secrets, and resentment fueled by the drudgery and despair of a mining life.
