Joseph is a lonely man who, one day, discovers strange little creatures growing in his recently barren garden. He befriends the creatures as they emerge, naming them, and falling in love with Ava, one of them. These ten small (only a foot tall) ground people are a kind o microcosm for our society, growing out of tinted earth, soil irradiated with human evil. Yet somehow this same soil produces in Ava a trace of love and beauty to which widowed Joseph responds. He wants to save his beloved Ava from tyranny, and is willing to commit murder to do so. Can Joseph justify any death with the ground people's rescue from tyranny? The problem of evil, of manipulating people as things, confronts Joseph for the first time. As Joseph realizes he can no longer bear to live isolated, disconnected, the season changes. In the end, heartbroken though he is, Joseph breaks the long silence between himself and his son, salvaging a connection to life from his nightmare of love. Science fiction, moral fable, bizarre love story - `Blight' is all of these, and whatever else a thoughtful reader brings to this luminous tale.