About the Author: Cecelia Holland was born in Henderson, Nevada, in 1943 and started writing at the age of twelve. In this unstable system, the anarchist Paula Mendoza, an agent of the Committee, works to make peace and ultimately protect her people in a catastrophic clash of worlds that destroys the order she knows. On the fringes of the solar system, in the gas planets, a strange, new, violent kind of human has evolved. Mars, Venus, and the moon support flourishing colonies of various political stripes. The society is an anarchy, with disputes mediated through the Machiavellian Committee for the Revolution.
Two thousand years into the future, runaway pollution has made the earth uninhabitable except in giant biodomes. (Nov.In the far future, an Earth-born woman must negotiate with a fearsome mutant race: "On a par with Ursula LeGuin or Arthur C. Gutsy and gritty, but touchingly vulnerable, she's an exemplary historical heroine.
Holland has created a truly independent, compassionate and headstrong frontier woman in Lily, who's too busy pursuing her art and knowledge of her heritage to establish a love relationship, although a fellow actor's kisses inflame her before he goes over the political edge. There's also a radical labor movement evolving, and troupe members, Brand, Lily and Stanford all wind up involved in the ensuing violence. San Francisco's mixed population of Chinese, black, Indian and Mexican residents and laborers opens Lily's eyes to the humanity of the rapidly changing times. Lily knows only that her mother's name is Dorothea, and her dark hair and golden complexion make her curious about her mother's ethnic origins. Meanwhile, the thespians face hard times in San Francisco with a bankrupt benefactor, and Lily embarks on a quest for her long-lost mother, who disappeared when she was a toddler.
Brand is tracking whoever sent a letter threatening the life of Leland Stanford, the former California governor who owns the Southern Pacific Railroad. Years ago, Brand killed her outlaw father and foster-father, and now he's after a man who may or may not be in Lily's troupe. Lily is traveling with an acting troupe to San Francisco, where they have been commissioned by a theater, but when Lily sees hard-bitten railroad detective Brand on their train, she's overwhelmed by the painful memories this man evokes. As in the prequel, Railroad Schemes, fiction and history are neatly interwoven, with a central theme being the new railroad connecting the East Coast to the West. Once again, the charming Lily Viner (aka Lily Nevada) brings a distant world to life: in this adventure it's California of the 1870s.
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