Calvin Bonner and his wife lose a newborn child the same year they lose their cattle to a great freeze-up. Destitute and out of options, he turns to robbery. At first, just wayward travelers on a lonely highway— and then he graduates to trains, and finally a bank.
The bank job provides him with enough money to quit his life of crime, but fate has more in store for him until he eventually has to come to terms with his wrongdoings in a plot twist we do not see coming.
It's a raw and redemptive story of the good and the bad of human nature.