Severine is sixteen and lives in a world where being female makes her rare, precious and hunted.The daughter of a northern Silverskin woman and a southern black man, she is raised by gay Travelers and that makes her doubly an outsider. But that life ends when her loving Traveler family is murdered. To survive, she sets out on a perilous search for a home but a Sickness, seeded by years of war, has left a world divided by fear and hate.When Severine stumbles upon her father's settlement, she thinks she has found her longed for home but her time there ends catastrophically and she treks north in search of her mother's people, accompanied by a man sworn to protect but with every reason to hate those she seeks.As the dangers escalate, Severine unravels the tragic mystery of her birth and the attempts of others to heal the Sickness's savage legacy. Their struggle becomes her struggle but as the lethal complications mount, it seems that a deadly history is doomed to repeat.In a world made deaf by hatred, who will hear the messenger?.