Harry Mitchell is a successful Los Angeles manufacturer whose wife is running for city council. His life is turned upside down when three blackmailers confront him with a videotape of him with his young mistress and demand $100,000. Fearing that the story will hurt his wife's political campaign if he goes to the police, Harry pretends that he will pay the men, but does not follow through.

In the 1820s two orphaned brothers carve a niche for themselves and their families with the beauty and music of the Ozark Mountain region as a backdrop.