He found himself in the forest. He had no memory of anything and was as helpless as an infant. Fortunately he was found by a kind family who took him in and taught him to be a man again. They called him Falk.
Falk stayed with them until he was competent to be on his own. Though he loved them, he knew he had to leave, to head west, to find out who he was and why his mind was stripped of all memories. And so he set forth, going to Es Toch, the city that might have all the answers.
He encountered other people, none as kind or friendly as those who took him in. Many were dangerous and hostile. He was briefly enslaved but managed to escape with the help of another slave, a woman who claimed to know how to get to Es Toch.
Their journey together was difficult and the woman became very ill and almost died but she was true to her word and led Falk to Es Toch. But once there, she betrayed Falk and handed him over to those who had stripped his mind of all knowledge. These his captors are his only hope, though, of discovering why his mind was tampered with and his only hope of finding his lost self.
The first part of the story where Falk is traveling across a wild and sparsely populated Earth was much better than the second. Once he gets to Es Toch, the story got less interesting as he becomes a passive captive in the hands of his enemies. He spends his time trying to figure out the truth about his captors and their plans for him, a mostly mental exercise: rather boring to read about.
Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.
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