AustLit

'In a world made deaf by hatred, who will hear the messenger?

'Severine's world ends the day her family is murdered. Being raised in the loving community of gay Travelers always marked her as an outsider, but being female puts her in mortal danger. Women are scarce, precious, and hunted.

'When chance brings Severine face to face with the father she has never known, he assigns the son of his murdered best friend to guard her. They soon clash.  Severine believes all men are violent brutes and Jeph resents his freedoms being curtailed. 

'An uneasy understanding grows but Jeph is glad to deliver her to the Enclaves, a sanctuary her father has carved out in the mountains for his women and children.

'But there is no safety in a world broken by war and sickness and when violence follows her, Severine flees to the northern city of Andhaka in search of a home amongst her mother's people. Jeph follows, bound by loyalty to her father, but the north holds terrible dangers for him.

'It's been years since Andhaka has welcomed outsiders with anything but bullets, and to survive and to protect Jeph, Severine must learn to use her enemies' weapons against them.

'As the stakes rise, she comes to understand the horror of her mother's loss, and what drove her father north seventeen years before.

'His quest becomes her quest, but she hasn't counted on the savage legacy that war and sickness have left behind, or on falling in love.

'Can Severine succeed where her father failed? Or will her fate prove even deadlier than his?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.