Reichardt’s tale of a frontier friendship is a nuanced and original contribution to the history of Westerns. Set in the Pacific Northwest in the mid-nineteenth century, it chronicles characters historically minimized by the genre, focusing on an itinerant cook for hire, Cookie , and a Chinese immigrant, King-Lu, whose chance meetings lead to cohabitation and ultimately a risky shared business venture. “Like many great westerns it critiques some of the genre’s foundational myths with bracing, beautiful rigor, including the myth of heroic individualism” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).