It is the year 2257. Keira Palados resides in her birth town of Hallett Cove, near Adelaide, Australia. At twenty-four years old, Keira enjoys a sedate life – her unchallenging job at the university, a few select friends including her dog and an adopted wild beach horse. Having never before left Earth, Keira lives a contented life of low adventure and certainty, relishing her time in her beachside house which she inherited from her parents after they disappeared on an archeological expedition to some far-away planet.

But Keira’s universe is rocked when she is notified that her fifteen-year-old sister, Anlee, has gone missing from her boarding school on Tau Ceti. Anlee is nothing like Keira – rambunctious, risk-taking, rejecting safety for adventure and knowledge. Keira has long resented her younger sister’s brilliance as a budding scientific genius, along with her infuriating recklessness, and now her sister has gone missing. All Keira knows is that Anlee stole a small spacecraft and ventured to an unexplored planet hoping to prove a scientific hypothesis. The journals Anlee kept are Keira’s only clues to her sister’s possible whereabouts.

Caught between frustration over Anlee’s impulsiveness and a deep love for her sister, and fearing losing her last connection to family, Keira decides to leave Earth and search for her missing sibling. Hiring an eclectic crew of the cargo freighter, the Magentum Allure, including a petulant but attractive captain, Keira sets out on an adventure that places her face-to-face with dangers she couldn’t even imagine.

From deep space travel in a rickety spaceship, to encounters with marauders, and even time travel, Keira’s former secure life is suddenly replaced by just the sort of adventures that she hates. But finding Anlee comes before comfort. In a galaxy-spanning search, Keira is forced to face the realities of life in space, overcoming challenges great and small, including her own doubts about herself.