Save the world before the drum line practice? No problem!

Sometimes it takes going to another world to find your place in this one.

This is the case for seventeen-year-old Jesse Woods – drum line maestro, track star, honors student. Jesse is a standout as one of the only Black students at a suburban Chicago high school. His well-organized world is thrown into chaos when his school is attacked by an alien species, Terrians, who have been playing gods throughout human histor.

After Jesse shares his snare drum with Kate Hughes, he experiences the triggering, a jump start to superhuman skills coded in his DNA from ancient aliens. Add a heavily-garbed woman sending a voice of warning in his head, and Jesse is shaken up, but not convinced things are different. All he knows is that he can’t stop his heart from flipping over Kate, even though he has Sofia, his girlfriend of three years.

The next day life yanks Jesse’s chain even harder when he, Kate, and Hayden Monroe are the only ones to see giant gel aliens fighting in the sky, generating a tornado that destroys the drum line practice field and all their friends. The heavily-garbed woman with the warning is actually an alien – a decked-out number who can morph from monster in the sky to a rather hot-looking humanoid with silver skin and hair. She saves the trio only to send them on a quest, one with elements of old epics, complete with mythological beasts, no outside communication, and cosmic powers that are enhanced by physical attraction and strong emotions. Suddenly Jesse’s desire to go with Kate not only makes him feel guilty, it helps trigger his super-human abilities, healing people with his hands and reading ancient alien texts. And there is one other thing that flips the script on Jesse’s world: his quest is one that is supposed to end the alien war scooting closer to Earth and get to the bottom of an outrageous claim made by this alien species. They say they have been pretending to be gods for humans since the start of the earliest civilizations.

Yeah, right, what else, locusts? Dragons in the sky? Alien ships? War between worlds? Armageddon? Yes. Maybe. Only Jesse and his friends can stop it.

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Meet the Author

Jenny Benjamin is a former high school English teacher who served at-risk, inner-city students for thirteen years. She is also the author of the novel This Most Amazing (Armida Books), the poetry chapbook More Than a Box of Crayons (Finishing Line Press), and the poetry chapbook Midway (No Chair Press), which won second place in the 2017 No Chair Press contest. Her novel, Heather Finch, will be published by Running Wild Press in June 2022.