A hundred years after the Big Wet, Earth has been left a broken, infertile world of rock and sand. The town of Providens is like many others on the post-Big Wet planet—small, mostly illiterate and struggling for survival. But while most communities are like Providens, not all the cities that survived the Big Wet are. Some are like Newbegin, burgeoning metropolises that combine pieces of past societies with the new status quo. When Providens welcomes a stranger named Michael into its midst, will the quiet man lead them to the better world of Newbegin or shatter what little order still exists?