Roc Books, November 1997, copyright by Catherine Wells, 1997.
Featuring a Southwestern setting and biosphere technology, this near-future science fiction novel
tells the tale of a society so terrified of disease that it will sacrifice almost anything to
avoid it, and a young woman who refuses to be the victim.
The story begins inside a sealed habitat in the Southwestern desert, where residents live to escape contamination by a virus which can lie dormant in the bloodstream for 15-20 years before afflicting its victims with spells of catatonia leading to death. But a startling secret about her own identity sends Twila Grimm outside the habitat to escape the medical oligarchy which has made her an unwitting guinea pig in its experiments. There she finds rival bands of young people living in the ruined city, spending their brief lives caught in the violence of gang warfare. Appalled by the brutality, Twila escapes again to find a kinder, gentler existence in a mountain village where the people have embraced the dreaded disease, believing it gives them unusual mental powers. Unable to share their experience, Twila wonders if this isn’t just another form of mass deception.
But Twila is haunted by those she left behind in the habitat who are still enslaved by fear and misinformation. Eventually she must go back to force a showdown with the one man she holds responsible for the medical oligarchy’s unspeakable crimes.