"She is alone, wounded, and wandering. The year is 1967, and disaster has befallen the doomsday cult in which she's grown up after the local Sheriff's office raided their compound, discovering a dead body and a landing strip with a sign welcoming extraterrestrial visitors. Rumors had long circulated among residents of Alamogordo, New Mexico, about what was going on at the farm in nearby La Luz, but nothing like this had ever happened."
"Oliver finds Izzy the day after the great failure of the first Apollo mission, which ended in the deaths of all three crew members after a fire broke out during a test; the mission never made it off the ground. The disaster of Apollo 1 holds particular resonance for Oliver: his family ranch is near the White Sands Missile Range and is increasingly being encroached on by government testing sites, as it has been for years."
In 1967 a wounded child, Izzy Gently, wanders alone after a raid on her doomsday cult compound that revealed a dead body and a landing strip with a sign inviting extraterrestrial visitors. Oliver and Maude Gently, local ranchers, find her and tend her wounds, taking her in. The discovery coincides with the Apollo 1 disaster, and Oliver's family ranch near White Sands Missile Range faces increasing encroachment from government testing sites. The story examines the costs of Cold War progress, the tension between distant government ambitions and individual lives, and rootedness in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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