Pamela Sargent doesn’t write showily and doesn’t rely on action set-pieces to make her fiction. She creates original and intriguing premises and she uses fascinating and convincing detail along with well-executed and believable characterization to tell stories that deliver sneakily powerful visions of imaginary reality. This alternate-historical take on the frontier expansion of post-Civil War America takes us to a place we hadn’t expected but can still see as a possibly better world than the one we know. Sargent is an SF writer but she works magic with her imagination and we’re the richer for it.