The story is set in Siberia. With accelerating global warming, it has become marginally more habitable and a bunch of Americans (mostly Quakers) looking for the simple life, leased a tract of land from the Russian government, and built some small towns while things were still looking hopeful. The point of view character, Makepeace, is a child of those settlers, now grown up, and trying to survive in a world where civilisation has suddenly gone.
Makepeace is female, though that's not revealed immediately. I think the male writer portrays the sense of being female in a sensible believable way. Coincidentally, like the female lead of Jacob De Zoet (which I am also reading) she has a burned face. She is living in isolation in the deserted town, and eventually she decides to go on the road, looking for civilisation. She runs across a couple of grim settlements, though not as grim as The Road, and becomes adept at survival. I think this is the key sentence:
Makepeace was just another mask that life wore as it fought to renew itself, unsentimental, unsparing, fighting ugly.
