Desperately poor Chinese peasants sell their daughter (Rosalind Chao) into slavery. She is sent like chattel to the American West in the 1880s and forced into prostitution, but she fights back. When saloon owner Chris Cooper buys her freedom, their wary relationship gives way to trust even as anti-immigrant phobia grips the town and the Chinese are forced out.

“Nancy Kelly's 1991 western softly explores racial and gender-based oppression in late-1800s America”

—Michael Snydel, The Spool