In this 19th-century drama, an American family from the Northeast heads to Wyoming in search of a better life, only to face tragedy and hardship. Maggie Sergent (Joanna Pettet), the hard-driving matriarch of the clan, is totally unprepared when her husband, John (William Shatner), is murdered. Left to handle the farm on her own, Maggie must choose whether to stay in Wyoming and run the farm with her children, or head back to the East Coast and the life she knows.