Acclaimed hard-SF author Linda Nagata introduces a new world: a human colony whose people have forgotten their past, on a tremendous structure that forms a great ring around the sun . . . where the sky is bisected by an arch of light and the mysterious "silver" rises from the ground each night to completely transform the landscape-and erase from existence anything it touches.

Young Jubilee is devastated when her brother Jolly is caught and taken by the silver. But when a forbidding stranger with the incredible power to control the silver comes seeking Jolly-and claiming that Jolly knows him-Jubilee first distrusts the man, then fears him and flees. For she has learned an impossible secret: Jolly may still be alive . . . and may somehow become the catalyst for the annihilation of everything she knows if she does not find him first.

Jubilee's flight will lead her to discoveries she could never have imagined, from the secret history of her civilization and her people's origins to the true nature of the silver, to the awesome forgotten memories within her. And with these she will forever alter her world's future . . . unless the dark stranger, relentless in his pursuit, achieves his goal of destroying it. One way or another, Jubilee's final confrontation will change everything . . . .