Hours before his first show in years, Garth Brooks, the best-selling recording artist in American history, stands atop his giant stage and describes his paralyzing inner fears. Minutes after receiving an award, Wynonna Judd, the feisty performer with the fragile soul, retreats to the back of her mother's restaurant and collapses in tearful frustration. The night his new album is released, Wade Hayes, the handsome young star with the haunted past, returns to his hometown for a bittersweet reunion. Over the last several years, country music has undergone a sweeping revolution-and one writer was granted unprecedented access to witness private moments of that revolution and to chronicle the genre's biggest stars as they changed the face of American music and the town that country calls home.