When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.
Hilary Swank
as Mary Bee Cuddy
Tommy Lee Jones
as George Briggs
Grace Gummer
as Arabella Sours
Miranda Otto
as Theoline Belknap
Sonja Richter
as Gro Svendsen
Tim Blake Nelson
as The Freighter
James Spader
as Aloysius Duffy
John Lithgow
as Reverend Alfred Dowd
Evan Jones
as Bob Giffen
Barry Corbin
as Buster Shaver
Hailee Steinfeld
as Tabitha Hutchinson
Meryl Streep
as Altha Carter
