Frontier opens with the story of Liujin, a young woman heading out on her own to create her own life in Pebble Town, a somewhat surreal place at the base of Snow Mountain, where wolves roam the streets and certain enlightened individuals can enter a paradisiacal garden. Exploring life in this city through the viewpoint of a dozen different characters, Can Xue's latest novel attempts to unify the grand opposites of life - barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western cultures.