Sixty years ago the United States Space Service was created and empowered to protect the potentially unlimited knowledge and wealth of space for the benefit of the whole of humankind. Guardians of fusion technology and everything above the atmosphere, the Space Service controls the flow of people, materiel, and information between Earth and the space stations, Luna, and Mars. Everyone in space is bound to the Space Service, and all spacers belong to the Service-mandated racial elite. The Space Service owns the stars-and it does not intend to share.
Seventeen-year-old Mara Duval, born in space, was destined to be part of humanity's first mission to the moons of Jupiter, until a medical accident left her quarantined on dirt forever.
But dirt is not the blighted wasteland she'd been taught it was, and the Space Service is holding humanity's future hostage behind a wall of lies. Now Mara is fighting back by transmitting videos of the truth to friends in space, speaking out whenever she can, and sharing technology and secrets with her Dirt ally Jael Alden, a young visionary determined to break through the Space Service's racial barrier.
She knows she doesn't have much time until the Space Service realizes what she's doing and stops her. But until they do, Mara's going to make the most of her life on dirt.
