Nothing Sacred

The Healer's War, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's Nebula Award-winning novel based on her experiences as a nurse in Vietnam, struck a raw nerve with many readers. Now Scarborough takes us one hundred years beyond that war to a world still embroiled in conflict.

In the middle of the twenty-first century people like Viveka Jeng Vanachek — overeducated and unemployable — have few options. Reluctantly, Viveka has joined the army, only to be shot down on her first mission. She is force-marched through the Tibetan Himalayas to a secret prisoner-of-war camp... where she begins to notice the strange and inexplicable.

Viveka and her fellow cellmates can't seem to remember how long they've been incarcerated: a guard requests Viveka's help in cataloguing ancient texts while other prisoners suffer hard labor. Then there are the dreams: of monks in a beautiful mountain city in the very ruins the prisoners are excavating. When the sky lights with nuclear fire, the answers Viveka must find will surprise the entire campas she and the rest are faced with choices that challenge long-held beliefs and force them to confront their deepest fears.