Naked and alone, the woman and man walk into an inhospitable land where the warmth of human companionship is a rare and cherished commodity. Their path is long and arduous, and survival is possible only with the help of alien medicine, and an inexplicable mental capability that ties them inextricably together in a shared journey, a common goal. Along the way, over thousands of years, they inhabit the margins of human societies—observing, waiting, seeking, learning—while pursued by a race of people whose purpose is to insinuate their beliefs and DNA throughout all human communities. Amassing a vast fortune along the way, the two of them plot a course of human history that will allow us, like them, to survive in a threatened world rapidly growing hostile and inhospitable.

As a writer who narrates dramas found in landscapes and communities far from the beaten path, John L. Purdy crafts stories about the shared, common ground of cultures that, at first glance, seem remarkably dissimilar. He takes audiences into locales where the stresses of change and conflict drive stories at once narrow in focus, yet sweeping in their implications, for us all, when survival requires communal cohesiveness, and willful acts of compassion, empathy.