In 2010 the author was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer at a time when she was intensely involved with an archaeological project in southern Jordan, and had become a serious student of the Arabic language. With the paradoxical juxtaposition of adventure and serious illness as the catalyst, C.P.T. Jennings used the long months of illness and treatment to pen this affecting memoir. In it, she articulates the inevitability of profound change, the cumulative riches of an individuals past, and the obligation to build and to renew, with whatever tools come to hand.

When their parents fail to return home to their Manhattan apartment one evening, twelve year old Sophie Penn and her brothers William and Tom are left to navigate on their own in a city where technology has become unreliable, discombobulated bands of people roam the streets, fires erupt spontaneously on the rivers, and no one seems to be in charge. On a journey that takes them from the changed streets of their home city to the no less changed and mysterious Undulating Mountain where their grandmother Lupine lives, the children seek to right their out-of-balance world. It is a journey fraught...

A dark age, illuminated by a moment of hope. A distant father revered by the known world. A mother who dabbles in mystery, whose friends are from an unknown land. War for belief, for territory, for familial power. Envy. Love betrayed, love unrequited, love that goes unrecognized. The ancient and hypnotic science of a Stargazer. and in the midst of all, a small, gifted, and misunderstood boy who must navigate the mysteries surrounding him. The early life of Medy Artorius."