Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0689316364, Hardcover)

"JACKAROO's many fans will willingly...follow the intrepid Birle as Fortune's wheel swings...from drudgery to adventure, from iron servitude to luxury, and then finally to independence."
BOOKLIST
Fourteen-year-old Birl, an Innkeeper's Daughter, can't imagine herself married to Muir, a hunter who lives in her village. Then, one extraordinary day, she finds a thief untying one of the Inn's boats. She tries to stop him, but by the next morning, she realizes he was Orien, a handsome young Lord, who was leaving his Kingdom behind. She vows to follow him wherever he goes. And together they take a perilous journey to the uncharted South--a sinister place where warriors rule and captives become slaves for life....