About the title
Cookie Figowitz, traveling alone across the American West during the era of its settlement, arrives in 1820 at a new settlement, where he befriends a Chinese man named Lu, who has turned up there in unclear circumstances and is hiding from the law after killing a Russian. Cookie shares his dreams with Lu — he'd like to one day open a bakery or a hotel in San Francisco. Together, the new friends build a business whose success rests on the existence of the local cow, which belongs to a landowner in the area... Based on Jonathan Raymond's novel Half-Life.