Frontier

Climate collapse has turned Earth back into open country. Towns are small and far apart, and the people in them are lawmakers, preachers and thieves who share one instinct: close ranks when a stranger arrives.

Nobody has descended from orbit in three hundred years. Then a ship comes down, and the woman who climbs out of it carries a gun and is looking for a particular person.

The book follows her across the continent as a series of encounters. Each chapter passes the point of view to whoever she meets next. Her motives and the shape of this world come into focus only from the outside, through the eyes of people who do not understand her.

It is science fiction told in the manner of a western, with the long distances, wary communities and pursuit that implies. Beneath the manhunt runs a love story. Expect an episodic structure with a shifting cast, and a slow reveal of what brought her here.