Zhanai'degau — Allen L. Wold

Our world is just one thread among uncounted others in the weave of the greater reality. Each of these threads is another world, some rather similar to ours, some bizarrely different. Each world has a rich culture, which the agent of a dark outside force is seeking to destroy.

Jeanette Delgado, small and young, struggles to make a success of the bookstore she runs with her husband, Steve. After he is killed in a freak accident, she is chosen, while still grieving, by powers she doesn't understand, to go to one threatened world, then another, and another, each time to assume the role of the hero. She has never been independent a day in her life.

Like her predecessors, her task is to try to prevent the agent of destruction from achieving its goal. In each world she is tested, and must discover the curage, the strength, and the leadership she never knew she had. In the end, she learns to accept her role, and decides to anticipate her enemy, by going to the next threatened world under her own power.

It all begins at the bonfire in her back yard, when she is dropped suddenly into the cavern of blue flames.