Nearing the middle of the 23rd Century, President Hsieh rules the most advanced self- contained ecosystem ever created: Barca City-the perfectly sealed biodome surrounds the most advanced technocracy the world has ever seen. Barca, a city-building so large it dwarfs the entire southern half of San Francisco Bay. He will allow nothing to take from him what his obsession with absolute power has earned him. He is a ruler-nearly a god.In another part of the Bay Area, mostly hidden from the Barcan Security Forces, Ranza's excitement swells as she realizes she is about to be honored as a lead hunter of the Santa Rosa Nomás tribe. But, her simple world is about to be threatened by a sudden change nearly as earth-shaking as the purge that destroyed all known life in California-a purge that caused her ancestors to abandon life as they knew it and flee deep into the forests of the North Bay, where they became hunter/gatherer tribespeople.An unexpected sighting by Barcan Security of humans living freely outside Barca City is enough to ignite a war, pitting the simple tribal Nomás against the powerful Barcans. Another purge would make the first seem like a fistfight. These two societies race toward complete annihilation, with nothing to save the peace-loving Nomás. Nothing. . . except perhaps magic, and the Phoenix Flower.