WINNER: Pinnacle Book Achievement Award

An alien race, the Ba’ren, makes contact with Earth. To jumpstart diplomacy with humans, the Ba’ren offer their advanced medical technology, prompting the United States government to create a joint research project, and to call for the best of the best.

Eighteen-year-old Emma Smith is ready to capitalize on this historic opportunity. She beats thousands of applicants for the position of student ambassador. Emma knows helping the Ba’ren cure osteosarcoma will kick-start her biomedical engineering career, not to mention give her a front-row seat to learn more about the mysterious aliens.

Sepporinen, a young Ba’ren asteroid miner, cares little about meeting humans. He seeks only riches and glory in prospecting the solar system’s asteroids, but the Ba’ren government inexplicably sends him to Earth to assist with the research project, and to work with a young Earth girl.

Emma and Sepporinen draw closer as they work together, and discover far more is at stake than what their respective governments have let on. As political struggles intensify between feuding human and Ba’ren factions, anti-alien sentiment on Earth reaches a lethal pitch. The unlikely pair, determined not to be pawns in this complicated game of life and death, must risk everything to help maintain the fragile peace between their two species.