Near Christmas, 1947, seven year old Colby James' father has been laid off from the railroad that hauls coal in the West Virginia mountains near the small town of Krebbs. Colby, thought asleep, overhears his parents talking that due to his father Bill's lack of a job so near Christmas, that they might have to tell him that Santa can't find them this year due to their moving since their last Christmas. His mind obsesses with that and he doesn't hear them say that they will not do that, that one way or the other he and his sick baby sister, Lauren, will have Christmas. Colby's mind goes to...

Gus DeVries is a retired, seventy-three year old geologist that has worked in southern Oklahoma for fifty years searching and finding oil and gas fields. His expertise of what's under the ground in that area is second to none. What he knows is under the ancient Arbuckle Mountains is not frightening nor is it new knowledge, except when it begins to make rumblings of rearing what some might call its ugly head, others its beautiful head, bringing about a geologic change to the region that naturally occurs only about every one hundred million years or so. It becomes known as THE EVENT. When Gus...