Warning: Adult content.
When Herndon got into his cryofreeze capsule on the starship 'Presidente Lula' he should have had his wife with him and they should have been one of the leading couples on a planet Brazil would claim, terraform and colonize. Instead his wife decides to remain behind with his condo and pension, leaving him heartbroken and dejected as he goes to sleep between the stars. He awakens to find an expedition from a nation that didn't even exist when they left has already come and gone. That expedition found that the planet ahead is a biodisaster they were unable to colonize. That expedition had also been the victim of a big data hack by one of their crewmen. They also find a greeting from a cabal of wizards that was supposed to be part of that hack.
Ava had worked for years to find a way to get herself back into flesh on the planet below so she wouldn't be alone in the contaminated and abandoned biology module of the expedition she used to administer. Once in flesh on the surface she finds that the society is not what she expected. Everyone is young and beautiful, everyone keeps 'lists' of their frequent sex partners. Everyone is open and frank about their bodies and sexuality. Status and deception are not part of the average person's life.
Thrown together in an attempt to get electronics manufacture working on the world of their exile, they find each other to be the only island of normalcy in this vastly alien culture. Can they overcome his loss of his wife and her history of rape in the ruins of Washington to have a normal relationship? Can they escape the attention their alien 'mating ritual' brings from the local media? Most of all, can they overcome their own personalities, knowing they are each other's only hope?