Katie Waitman's award-winning first novel, The Merro Tree, heralded the arrival of an exciting new science fiction talent. Now the exceptional promise of that acclaimed debut is more than met in a powerfully original story of love, loss, and transformation. Set on a war-torn world of stark contrasts and fragile balances, of plenitude and poverty, romance and betrayal, Sa'har will stir the heart and haunt the mind long after the last page is turned. . . . Sekmé is a rarity--a female Maurheti soldier risen to the rank of Commander at the tender age of twenty-four. Daughter of a pilot killed in a gel-bombing raid on godless Tel-mari civilians, Sekmé is determined to crush resistance once and for all. But the merciless efficiency that has made her a hero to her soldiers and a demon to the enemy has also earned Sekmé the enmity of dangerous men closer to home. Men with interests other than victory. Merkus is a freedom fighter leading the resistance against the despoilers of Tel-mari wealth and honor. Sickened by the endless slaughter, he longs for a peace he has never known--a peace he has only read about in an ancient poem that sings of a mythical place called Sa'har. But to the Maurheti, Markus is a hated terrorist to be hunted down. Wepanu has spent his life wandering the inhospitable deserts of Maurhet, his only companions the mysterious entities known as jo. Visible to a chosen few, the jo remember what humans have forgotten--a prophecy passed on to Wepanu that will bring Sekmé and Merkus into a violent collision fated to shake the beliefs of Maurheti and Tel-mari to the core. A prophecy that will point the way to the peace of Sa'har--or ignite an all-consuming holocaust . . .