Alienable Rights

When Rowan Layne emerges from a grueling exam to public panic over breaking news of aliens among us and we could be them, returning to the legal profession loses its luster. She’s not ready to discover her own alien DNA percentage, but needs answers about snarky voices in her overly sensitive ears. And if she keeps riling local officials with enlightened views on alien rights in her newspaper column, she might need to move or invest in Kevlar.


Inalienable rights are succumbing to a legal battle over alien rights spearheaded by the new Other Worldly Coalition founded for those with more than fifty percent other-worldly DNA. But Rowan must take yet another test on attorney professional ethics as too many White House lawyers are criminally indicted and she can’t help but cop an attitude about it. Plus, how is it she managed to wrangle the only cowboy in America who won’t dance?


Residents of her rural central Nevada gun-worshipping town are convinced it’s under attack by aliens stealing uranium from a defunct copper mine pit, and two spaceships shock the world by departing and landing in Monterey Bay while she’s there with her octogenarian parents. But fashion-focused Mom is more concerned with texting emoji, dinner reservations and shoe shopping, while hard-of-hearing Dad receives messages in Morse code and misses golf.


Will auditory tests reveal if Rowan hears aliens, or is persistent ringing in her ears merely tinnitus? Will the former Marine cowboy and younger man in her life abscond to Mars if she turns out to have superpowers? Because it’s bad enough Rowan’s a menopausal liberal journalist, her orange tabby cat is an alien, and he and his crybaby dog could very well be other-worldly too. Along with a growing list of foods, plants and animals deemed not of Earth amid daily headlines revealing more U.S. alien ports of call, possible DNA data manipulation, and a burgeoning swell of presidential-fueled paranoia about aliens.


Once government agents get wind of Rowan’s potential hearing abilities, her likely-an-alien gal pal sums it up best. She’s got goons high-speed chasing her home from Las Vegas, hacking her email and hounding her with calls. They think she’s texting with aliens in secret code and she suspects they want her to spy for her country. She has an ex-CIA boyfriend and physicist friends trying to help, and crazed vigilante locals who object to her writing anything good about aliens or accurate about the Constitution, as well as two daring red-headed extraterrestrial pilots known as Red Orbiters looking out for her. And they can dance!