2002: Jake Mitchell is the defending World West Coast Swing Champion. He's got everything going for him: looks, personality, and style. He's at the top of his game when he and his partner Corinne are crowned the unexpected winners at the World Swing Dance Championships. As the crowd cheers and the celebration begins, Jake appears uneasy. Did he really deserve to win? The music blasts and the bass is thumping, and Jake hears none of it. He feels it. Jake is completely deaf, due to an ear infection when he was a teenager. He learned how to dance by feeling the vibrations of the music. Now he feels something else: that perhaps the judges gave him the win out of sympathy. Present Day: Jessica Donovan's life is boring. When she was younger, she was a dancer who had dreams of Broadway. Now she's an English teacher for disinterested, upper class middle school kids, and she's dying to let loose...

The Burning Plain follows the story of several different people separated by time and space -- Sylvia, a woman in Oregon who must undertake an emotional odyssey to rid herself of her past; Mariana and Santiago, two teenagers trying to piece together the shattered lives of their parents in a New Mexico border town; Maria, a little girl who goes on a border-crossing voyage to help her parents find redemption, forgiveness, and love; and Gina and Nick, a couple who must deal with an intense and clandestine affair... because they are both married.