Fifty years after a nearly apocalyptic world war, human population is a fraction of what it had been. In an effort to restore the dangerous population levels, women were enslaved and used as reproductive machinery. In the natural response to such arbitrary oppression, a courageous leader arose among the women and led many of them out of the giant maternity-camps of the north-east into the west to escape their masters.

Forcibly sensitive to the necessities of reproduction and survival, they took a considerable number of male captives with them. Now the war is fought across a roughly north-south front that spans what was once the American Midwest. Male soldiers push westward as woman warriors hold the line and push back. The war has raged for more than a generation and both sides have nearly forgotten the apocalypse that preceded it in the desperate fight for reproductive survival. In a generation of war, numerous legends have come into being: the Battle of the Second Alamo, when a women's raiding party met a concerted southern male push and holed up in a San Antonio mall for two weeks before they were overrun and captured; the Battle of the Mississippi, when the first women's campaign was turned back at last in shattered St. Louis, when the great arch finally fell; and the disastrous Platte Offensive, which turned into a thirty day rearguard action as the beleaguered women were repulsed and struggled back to their lines. Even the mysterious Fargo Winter Corps, a collection of men and women who were forced to collaborate to survive a devastating northern winter, all of whom subsequently deserted together and disappeared into the vastness of the wilderness... for now.

The New American Civil War now rages; soldiers use anything from clubs and crude swords to more rare and complicated firearms to improvised explosives. Battles are fought in ruined buildings amid cities that once boasted millions of people: Minneapolis, Omaha, Dallas. Across scorched plains and rolling hills eyes watch for campfires, on the lookout for any sign of incoming soldiers.