Mendoza is a Preserver, a botanist sent back from the twenty-fourth century by The Company to recover things from the past which would otherwise be lost. She's an immortal, indestructible cyborg; she's also a woman in love. In sixteenth-century England, Mendoza fell for a native: a tall and dark renegade who radiated determination and sexuality, and who died a martyr's death, burned at the stake. In nineteenth-century America, Mendoza encountered another native, eerily identical to the last, and fell for him as well. When he also died, she killed six men to avenge him, but The Company didn't like that - so they dumped her in the Back Way Back.Now, stranded 150,000 years in the past, there are no natives for Mendoza to fall in love with. She tends a garden of maize, and for three thousand years, pines for the man she lost twice. Then, one day, out of the sky and out of the future, comes a renegade, a time faring pirate, a tall and dark man who radiates determination and sexuality, Mendoza's love once and future love. This is the beginning of the end.