The Spencers are a large and growing family living in the Grand Teton Mountains of Wyoming in the early 1960s. Family patriarch Clay Spencer is fiercely independent, yet dedicated to his family. While he resists the influence of religion, he struggles to remain faithful to his wife Olivia, to enable his son Clay Spencer, Jr.- whom most everyone calls "Clayboy" - to attend college, and to build a new home for his family. The area is very rural, and the family of eleven does not own a motor vehicle or even a horse, nor do they have electricity or a telephone.