Here is a splendid new far-future adventure novel that poses challenging Questions on the meaning of being human. Cadet Jahna arrives on Nelding, a backwater planet, as a volunteer in an interstellar peace corps The First Fathers of Needing, a brooding, repressive group, requested her particularly—surprisingly, for she is young and in-experienced. Her first impressions are gloomy. Jahna is delivered to the huge log fortress, Pengalen, where she learns, first, that she is to be assigned the care of infants and, secondly, from Becklord. the mysterious but attractive lord of Pengalen, that there is another Culture on Nelding, a forest community called Tentback which is considered unclean and inhuman by the First Fathers and their followers.