How the West Was Won: The Complete First Season is a family saga focusing on the lives of the Macahan family in the Old West. The leader of the family, Zeb Macahan (James Arness) is accustomed to the harsh realities of life on the frontier. His sister-in-law, Kate (Eva Marie Saint), alone since the death of her husband, is struggling to maintain a home for her daughters and sons. Luke (Bruce Boxleitner), Kate's eldest son, is pursued by the law for desertion from the Union Army. Their stories are played out against a realistic recreation of the American West in that lusty, hard-hitting period when laws were frequently broken and progress was charted by individual suffering and survival.