The Handsome Man

The handsome man, Caleb, leaves his comfortable life as a professor in Riverton to join other passengers rowing their way up the Queen's Highway south into the Backlands. While others seek riches, he is pursing vengeance for the deaths of his first-mother and daughter.

Away from the city in this post-technological world, he must discover himself amongst the hard-bitten, riverboat captain and crew, inside a gypsy camp with their queen, employed by a loan shark to break the limbs of those who default, and ultimately face-to-face with the Royals who insist he bend a knee. Caleb's new life crosses between the impoverished and the wealthy, the helpless and the powerful, the benefactors and the greedy, and the desperate and their tormentors.

He becomes part of the frontier outpost, Star Fortress, and it becomes the cradle for his growth.

But he is not alone; his looks attract those who want him, those who care about him, and those who help him. Foremost of these is the enigmatic Ricard, a one-legged man in a world where physical or mental mutations are death sentences. Their fates will become intertwined.