Deanna Wolfe, a forest ranger tracking a coyote, is surprised by a young hunter named Eddie Bondo who has been watching her unawares.

Deanna invites Eddie back to her forest cabin and they make love, driven by an attraction she cannot resist despite her misgivings.

Eddie reveals he comes from three generations of Wyoming sheep ranchers, and Deanna suspects he has traveled to Zebulon specifically to hunt coyotes.

Farmer Cole Widener dies in an accident during a part-time grain delivery, leaving his wife Lusa alone on the Widener farm.

Lusa attends Cole's wake and realizes everyone expects her to return to her old city life, but she quietly decides to stay.

Lusa hatches a plan to raise goats and sell them during the week when several major religious holidays simultaneously require goat meat.

Deanna follows coyote vocalizations deep into the forest and discovers the entire pack, including a litter of living pups, at their den.

Cole's family gathers at the Widener farm for the Fourth of July, and Little Rickie privately reveals to Lusa that Jewel has cancer.

Deanna's monthly supply runner Jerry arrives and discovers Eddie at the cabin, forcing a tense confrontation between Deanna and Eddie about their arrangement.

Garnett and Nannie argue over splitting the cost of clearing a fallen oak, and Garnett admits he cannot find fault in Nannie's logic about pesticides.

Deanna hears a single gunshot and fears the coyotes have been killed, but Eddie returns to the cabin carrying a wild turkey.

Jewel collapses in Lusa's garden, reveals she will not survive her cancer, and Lusa offers to adopt Jewel's two children.

Deanna realizes that her unusual fatigue, emotional swings, and cravings are signs of pregnancy rather than the menopause she had feared.

Deanna writes a letter to Nannie Rawley asking to leave the mountain in September and come to live with her, bringing her unborn child.

Eddie Bondo disappears from the mountain while Deanna is out, leaving only a short note saying he has met his match.

Deanna Wolfe, a forest ranger living alone on Zebulon Mountain, begins a passionate affair with Eddie Bondo, a young Wyoming hunter who has come to Zebulon to kill coyotes — the very animals Deanna has devoted her life to protecting. In the valley below, Lusa Landowski loses her husband Cole in an accident and must decide whether to keep the Widener farm she never fully felt she belonged to. While Lusa learns to stand her ground among Cole's skeptical family, Deanna struggles to reconcile her body's desire for Eddie with her mind's knowledge that they are fundamentally opposed on the question of predators. As summer deepens, Deanna discovers a thriving coyote family on the mountain, and Lusa hatches a bold scheme to save the farm by raising goats for religious holidays. The season ends with two private reckonings: Deanna realizes she is pregnant with Eddie's child, and Lusa finds that tragedy and unexpected love have permanently rooted her in Zebulon.

The headline events driving all three storylines across one Appalachian summer.

Elderly widower Garnett Walker wakes on his inherited Zebulon farm, listens to the morning birds, and feels the weight of an old man's solitude.

Shortly after Cole's funeral, Lusa dreams of a lover with the silky pale-green wings and maroon shoulders of a luna moth.

Garnett tries to remove Nannie's NO SPRAY ZONE sign and a snapping turtle latches onto his foot; he stubbornly refuses Nannie's help and hobbles home.

Two of Cole's brothers-in-law arrive wanting to plant tobacco on Saturday; Lusa asserts the farm is hers and says she will make her own decision.

Lusa and Jewel bond while Lusa borrows canning jars, discovering that Jewel is an unexpected ally and the most compassionate of the Widener sisters.

Garnett overhears Nannie in a store discussing a Snapper and storms out in embarrassment, later realizing she was talking about her lawn mower.

Garnett writes Nannie a letter arguing that God made humans keepers of the earth with the right to use other creatures for human purposes.

Deanna and Eddie watch two female coyotes hunt together in the open, moving as one animal, and neither speaks to the other about what they witnessed.

Lusa calls Garnett Walker, the county's unofficial goat expert, for advice on procuring and breeding goats for her holiday-selling scheme.

Lusa cares for Crys while Jewel undergoes chemotherapy; that night Hannie-Mavis reveals the doctors have stopped treatment and given up on saving Jewel.

Garnett suffers a dizzy spell in Nannie's orchard and Nannie holds his head in her hands, teaching him a trick to stop the episodes.

Lusa and Crys go luna-moth hunting at night and discover that honeysuckle has completely consumed Lusa's garage while she ignored it all summer.

Garnett sees two wild coyotes cross the road in front of his truck and feels something magical and right about their presence in Zebulon.

Garnett approaches Nannie's farm with a shotgun, convinced a lingering man is a rival suitor, and discovers he has been jealous of a scarecrow.

A female coyote prowls Zebulon Mountain at night, picking up the scent of a newly arrived male from another pack.

Garnett Walker, a nearly eighty-year-old widower, wakes each day on the farm his grandfather built from chestnut timber, consumed by a low-grade feud with his neighbor Nannie Rawley over her refusal to use pesticides. Their quarrel escalates through misunderstandings and letter-writing into a full philosophical debate about man's place in nature, while Garnett finds himself unexpectedly moved by small acts of Nannie's kindness. In the valley, Lusa slowly builds a life among the Widener family, finding an unlikely ally in Jewel, enlisting Garnett's goat expertise, and forging a deepening bond with Jewel's daughter Crys during a summer that reveals more loss than anyone expected. Deanna and Eddie's relationship intensifies as they witness the wild coyote family hunting together, a scene that crystallizes everything they cannot agree on. By summer's end, coyotes are still crossing Zebulon roads and running through the night, indifferent to the human arguments that have swirled around them all season.

Significant moments of discovery, rivalry, and connection that shape the summer's deeper story.

Eddie asks to follow Deanna on the trail and she admits she has been tracking coyotes, hoping they will restore the entire mountain ecosystem.

Cole picks a branch of honeysuckle from the yard and carries it to Lusa as a wordless peace offering after their argument about pesticides.

Deanna and Eddie make love inside a hollow chestnut log; Deanna wakes angry and accuses Eddie of watching her like a predator who thinks he has won.

Deanna tells Eddie about her half-sister Rachel, born with Down syndrome, and her father's lifelong romantic relationship with neighbor Nannie Rawley.

Deanna warns Eddie that if he kills any of the coyote pups on the mountain, she will put a bullet in his leg.

Nannie sends Garnett a letter arguing he has misread Genesis and that even weeds and pond algae are sacred creations deserving respect.

Lusa and Little Rickie watch the billy goat work his herd by moonlight; Rickie kisses Lusa on the mouth and she firmly refuses him.

Garnett and Nannie's argument over the fallen oak turns theological, and Nannie weeps aloud about her daughter's death and Garnett's estrangement from his own son.

Deanna discovers the roof snake has swallowed the phoebe fledglings and is overwhelmed by grief she connects to the end of her own fertility.

Garnett spots a young chestnut sprouting from an old stump, and Nannie reveals she has two old chestnuts on her property whose flowers he can have.

Garnett returns to Nannie's farm with a single heart-shaped roofing shingle as a peace offering, and Nannie calls the gesture a miracle.

Lusa sees the custody papers and discovers that Jewel's ex-husband Shel's full name is Garnett Walker IV, making her neighbor Garnett the children's grandfather.

Lusa asks Jewel's permission to reach out to Garnett Walker and rekindle a relationship between him and his estranged grandchildren Crys and Lowell.

Deanna huddles alone through a violent storm in her chestnut-log cabin, and as the storm finally breaks, a mated pair of coyotes begins to sing.

Lusa reads about mouthless moths that live only to find a mate and realizes Cole's sole purpose was to call her to the Widener farm.

From the first moment Eddie asks to follow Deanna on the trail, the summer's central conflict takes shape: two people who desire each other and cannot agree on the worth of a predator's life. Meanwhile in the valley, Cole's wordless honeysuckle offering plants a seed of meaning that Lusa will tend all summer, even as she learns to fight back the plant itself. Garnett and Nannie's written argument about Genesis deepens into an in-person reckoning with grief, God, and estranged children, and their brittle antagonism slowly cracks open into something warmer. Lusa forges a bond with her troubled niece Crys, discovers a hidden family connection to Garnett Walker, and finds herself weaving the two households together across their old estrangement. By the time storms break over the mountain and coyotes sing in the dark, each character has crossed a threshold they cannot walk back through, and the summer's meaning has settled into permanent shapes.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that change each character forever.