Melissa Gilbert is still best known for playing Laura Ingalls in the 1970s costume series Little House on the Prairie. So it will come as no great surprise to viewers of this over-sentimental drama that her high-powered lawyer would give up her stressful life to follow the trail of her recently deceased father's secret past in the country. Perhaps less blatant casting might have given David S Cass Sr's TV movie some much-needed edge, as Gilbert's obsession with a faded photograph and the discovery that her she's related to a onetime rodeo queen (played by Lindsay Wagner) suffers from a schmaltziness that is only heightened by the lingering, romanticised rural vistas.

After the death of her father, Natalie Travers discovers he was married to a rodeo star before he married Natalie’s mother. Upset that her father kept part of his life a secret from her and bewildered over how a prominent judge could fall for a cowgirl, she sets out to find Maggie Mae Jarrett. But Natalie meets her daughter Jessie Mae Jarrett who is struggling to keep the wild horses on her land alive and safe.