She gave up everything to keep her daughter safe. But she cannot protect her alone. When Elara fled to the wilderness to raise her magically gifted daughter, she thought she had turned her back on the civilized world forever. With famine and pestilence plaguing the land, the most she feels she can hope for is to live out her life on her homestead, protecting her daughter from the evil men who seek to use her gift for their own malevolent purposes. Elara knows that they cannot hide forever. She also knows that when the evil men find her, she will not be able to protect her daughter from them alone. So when a grizzled and world-weary veteran wanders across their homestead, she realizes that she must open her heart and take a chance on him, even if it means risking everything she has worked for. With her gift for clairvoyance, her daughter foresees a time when hope will return to the land. But with the dark powers hunting her, which of them will live to see it?
Author
Joe Vasicek fell in love with science fiction and fantasy when he read A Wrinkle in Time and The Neverending Story as a child. He wrote several unfinished novels in high school and took Brandon Sanderson's writing class at Brigham Young University. He first came onto the indie writing scene in 2011 with his debut novel Genesis Earth. Since then, he has written more than twenty novels and novellas, including Genesis Earth, Gunslinger to the Stars, The Sword Keeper, and the Sons of the Starfarers series. His stories have been published in Perehilion, Mirror Dance, Sci Phi Journal, Uprising Review, Kasma SF, and Leading Edge. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus Mountains. He has also traveled across the United States, and has lived in Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, California, Utah, Washington DC, and Iowa. Wherever he goes, though, he's always writing.
