Besides their name, the Popsics seem to be a normal family. Sholt and his wife, Dyrain, are perfect pushovers with three spoiled children who they secretly believe are the only reason why they are still married. Their teenage adopted Pakistani son, Sammy, knows for certain he is the luckiest teenager alive. His sisters, Kamora and Olina, take pride in their big sister / little sister roles. But the truth is that this family does not exist yet. Years earlier, Dyrain is a fifteen-year-old with a devoted pen pal, Ien Green. She has never seen his face or heard his voice. He lives in Wyoming, she in Utah. For five years, Ien has been communicating with Dyrain through letters. Only Dyrain knows Ien is an alien. What she does not know is that he is authoring her future life into existence for the purpose of tranquility when his and her people come together. Now only time will tell whether Dyrain can come to accept the alien writings enough to continue her relationship with Ien and, in her own way, help him introduce Earth to alien life. In this science fiction adventure, an earthling, brought together with an alien through pen pal correspondence, discovers her destiny is nothing like she ever imagined.

"An extraordinary feat: the best institutional study based on archives ever to have been done in the China field. It will set the standard for a generation of researchers."--Philip A. Kuhn, Harvard University