It was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award in 1984, but lost out to William Gibson's Neuromancer; both novels were part of the third Ace Science Fiction Specials series edited by Terry Carr.

The second is the first-person narrative of Madison Yazoo Leake, a soldier in the United States Army and a member of the "Special Group" being sent back in time to 1930s Louisiana in an attempt to stop the destruction of the human race in a nuclear war.

The final narrative is based on the diary entries of Warrant Officer Smith, another member of the Special Group.

She arrives with the rest of the team of military and CIA personnel in what apparently is their timeline, only hundreds of years earlier than intended.

Through her diary entries and the count of those members present for duty the story of their interactions with the local natives in their pre-Columbian world.