Today, tomorrow, always...the white-haired girl from the marsh is running for her life down a derelict highway In a future world polluted to the point of dissolution, the trees are dead, the sky is yellow, and no birds sing. Everyone and everything is tinged with madness. For Eva Belmort there seems no role except to become some man's plaything and drudge. Then, one day, arrives the stranger with the gun - with blue eyes and hair as white as her own. Roaming the tortured landscape in his wagon, Steel is a seller of death...but for Eva he provides hope of escape from Foulmarsh. Urged on by a power of love and hate impossible to fathom, Eva's travels now take her to distant towns and villages full of danger and surprises - and arouse in her strong passions she cannot harness...