Rael's father, Drase of the line of Peor, is the best stonecutter Taraf the City has ever seen. Stonecutting isn't usually women's work, but Rael?a head taller than her brothers, and as broad across in her shoulders as her father?finds it fits her well. Until the day her brother Tei is killed by a desert tribesman.

Tei's death comes at a crucial juncture for Taraf the City. Beset by the tribes, as well as a rising threat from a king in the south, Rael and her fellow stoneworkers are scrambling to finish building the city wall. In the city itself, tensions are rising between the scholar-priest of the city and the Taraf, whose line has ruled the city since its founding. Shattered and mourning, Rael and her family are all forced to make choices between their desire for vengeance, their love for each other, their loyalty to their home, their duty towards God, and what their hearts tell them is right.

In this return to the world of Sunset Mantle, Alter S. Reiss continues to explore the harsh realities as well as the joys of an Iron Age culture that never was, where God's law and family duty are paramount, yet moral certainty is as rare as water in the desert.