Ainsley Dupree (Martha Plimpton) is a short-order cook at a diner in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a country town in the middle of nowhere. Lonely and bored, Ainsley becomes pen pals with Jack Stillings (Kevin Anderson), who is currently serving time in prison. When Jack is released, he immediately asks Ainsley to marry him, and she impulsively agrees. Jack embraced Christianity while behind bars, and he encourages his wife to attend church with him each Sunday. However, Jack's requests soon become demands, and before long, she's forbidden to leave the house while he's at work pumping gas. Ainsley quietly rebuffs Jack's demands, slipping into town to a convenience store while he's away, but she soon learns, after Jack's parole officer pays a visit to their home, that his crime was more serious than she imagined; he beat a woman so brutally that she nearly died. Meanwhile, Sheriff Sam Rogers (Hal Holbrook) finds a 14-year-old boy, Tom Spencer (Nick Stahl), wandering dazed in ragged and bloody clothes along a lonely road. Tom leads Sam to the scene of a violent crime he has just witnessed, while telling him of the traumatic events in his family that led to an act of shocking brutality. Writer and director Tim Blake Nelson adapted Eye of God from his own stage play.