Finalist for the Hugo Award . Ofelia-tough, kind, wise and unwise, fond of food, tired of foolish people-is one of the most probable heroines science fiction has ever known. -Ursula K. Le Guin

For forty years, Colony 3245.12 has been Ofelia’s home. On this planet far away in
space and time from the world of her youth, she has lived and loved, weathered the
death of her husband, raised her one surviving child, lovingly tended her garden,
and grown placidly old. And it is here that she fully expects to finish out her days-until
the shifting corporate fortunes of the Sims Bancorp Company dictates that Colony
3245.12 is to be disbanded, its residents shipped off, deep in cryo-sleep, to somewhere
new and strange and not of their choosing. But while her fellow colonists grudgingly
anticipate a difficult readjustment on some distant world, Ofelia savors the promise
of a golden opportunity. Not starting over in the hurly-burly of a new community
… but closing out her life in blissful solitude, in the place she has no intention
of leaving. A population of one.

With everything she needs to sustain her, and her
independent spirit to buoy her, Ofelia actually does start life over-for the first
time on her own terms- free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies
of others. But when a reconnaissance ship returns to her idyllic domain, and its
crew is mysteriously slaughtered, Ofelia realizes she is not the sole inhabitant
of her paradise after all. And, when the inevitable time of first contact finally
arrives, she will find her life changed yet again-in ways she could never have imagined.
…

Pure satisfaction from cover to cover. -Anne McCaffrey