Lena McLean, who raises goats and produces cheeses in a beautiful valley in southeastern Minnesota, has her life disrupted by the discovery in the region of rich deposits of the sand used for oil fracking. This frac sand is found nowhere else in such abundance, so mining companies are willing to pay a lot of money for the land of struggling dairy farmers, who see a onetime opportunity to unload their unprofitable farms and retire to Florida. But mining frac sand would leave the land as barren as a desert, with no future value, so the community is divided between people who want to make a quick fortune and people who want to preserve the environment. Lena gets elected to the county board on her position against the mining, and she becomes the target of a large global organization that wants to exploit the sand deposits. To achieve its objective of getting her to change her position, the organization pursues a strategy of terrorism, committing acts of violence against her animals, her workers, her friends, and her family to reinforce the message that the only way she can protect them is to vote against a proposed law that would ban frac sand mining in the county.