When the King of the Roads is betrayed by his uncle to his murderers, his wife Lupa finds herself alone in a man's world of tribal politics and war. Everyone underestimates Lupa, if they consider her at all. They are making a mistake. Lupa has made a promise to her husband to avenge his death and Lupa is a woman of her word. Her quest takes her away from the tents of her travelling people to the town of the Others, where her husband's eyeless head watches as she takes her first revenge.Now on the run, through the marshes and rich farmland of the great river, Lupa hunts and is hunted by her husband's murderers. On the estuary islands her sons and their protector are just one step ahead of the killers. But revenge is not simple and Lupa must face a choice, one which will have great consequences for her people. For this is more than a revenge story, it is the tale of the rise of a woman leader and the price she pays for that rise. It is the story of a travelling people, persecuted by settlers and their armies, and the woman who leads them at the time of their greatest peril.This book is magic realism - set in a realistic fantasyland with only limited magical elements.