The Pale Border

In the fictional Euro-American republic of Veridia, Elliott Cross serves as a junior aide to Senator Harlan Draven. When a neglected inmate’s death at Greycliffe Prison threatens the senator’s rise to governor, Elliott is sent to bury evidence in the lawless frontier known as the Pale. There he encounters a ghostly woman who feeds stray cats by a disused well, and he discovers that the borderland hums with a wild, pre-legal vitality. As a journalist is assassinated and the last proof falls into his hands, Elliott must choose between a gilded career and a leap into the unknown—where the well offers a passage to rewrite his entire existence.