In the search for home, sometimes you find more than you bargained for.

Awakening to find himself deposited like a zoo animal on an alien world, all Carl wants is to find a way back to Earth. But he's stuck on a peninsula, hemmed in a small paradise by sea monsters and an impassable desert.

His fellow villagers, also specimens plucked from Earth, live in primitive conditions, paralyzed by superstitions that keep them from venturing beyond the peninsula. To complicate matters, Carl has fallen for Tanya, the witchdoctor's enchanting daughter. If she would just stop refusing his advances, he might almost—almost—be content with his new life.

But Carl arrived with something the rest of them lack—memories of home. And a growing suspicion that the "desert ghoul" the villagers fear could be his ticket back to Earth.