Jeb is a half-trained shaman when she is imprisoned. Five generations previously, an onboard disaster caused a thousand people to be set down on Lotor, a baleful planet-construct, with the promise that their Ark Ship would fetch them once it had resolved its problems. The settlers survive Lotor's malicious intentions by aligning themselves with Earth-animal totems and training up a class of shamans to guide them home. Three years later, Jeb sees the Ark Ship in Lotor's skies. Lotor in the meantime has decimated her people. After contacting the Ark Ship using her shaman-learnings, Jeb escapes the prison and gathering the remnants of her people, leads them to the last shuttle that can take them off-planet to join the Ark Ship.

Half Shaman is the first instalment of a space-fiction series, Back to Earth. A novella of about 50 thousand words, its young protagonist is an older teenager, mature enough to fall in love, get married, and travel the high road in her story.