Maureen F. McHugh is a science fiction writer whose books emphasize the relationships between her characters and the timeless longing for self-determination and authentic connection to others. "McHugh writes science fiction from the inside out, with the focus on character. . . . After awhile the reader forgets the extraterrestrial setting and the fairy-tale devices," observed Gerald Jonas in the New York Times Book Review. McHugh's career had its auspicious beginning with the award-winning China Mountain Zhang, a novel noted for its "astonishingly realistic portrayal of a future China," to quote Carl Hays in Booklist. Since then the Ohio-based author has established a reputation for "using exotic settings as backdrops for stories of self-discovery and personal courage," as Jackie Cassada observed in Library Journal.

McHugh writes of outsiders who live in future societies that are falling apart. John R. Alden, writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, stated that "McHugh writes about...