7 year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) is just able to keep her family together in a dirt poor rural area, despite a catatonic mother and an absent meth-making father, Jessup. She takes on the responsibility of raising her two younger siblings and dreams of entering the military. After her father's arrest, the local Sheriff tells Ree that Jessup put up their house as collateral for his bail; unless he shows up for trial in a week's time, they will lose it all. Determined to find him dead or alive, Ree doggedly questions her father's criminal relatives and associates, but everywhere she goes the message is the same: stay out of it and stop poking your nose in other people's business. Even her father's brother, Teardrop (John Hawkes), tells her that Jessup has probably been murdered. Undaunted, Ree pushes on. After having tried to speak to the region's patriarch Thump Milton (Ronnie Hall) twice and thus getting beaten up, Teardrop, who had at first told his niece not to pursue any further in her father's lot, rescues and tells her now, that Jessup obviously had started supplying the sheriff with information about his meth-dealing kin and thus probably was killed by one of them. Teardrop tells Ree "she owns him" because he has taken responsiblility with Thump for her future actions. He also tells her that if she finds out who killed her father, not to tell him, because then he will end up "toes up" also. Ree sees no further options that would enable her to either keep the house or keep the family together. Then one night the Milton women approach Ree and make her go with them to "her fathers bones". They want to settle the argument without revealing too much and without any more rumours being told about them. They take Ree to a lake where the women reveal to her the place where her father's body lies. Merab then cuts the hands off the corpse so Ree is finally able to prove the death of her father and thereby resolve the issue of the bail. In the last scene Teardrop breaks to Ree that he knows the name of Jessup's murderer, but doesn't reveal it.