Micky Bellsong makes the wrong choices, particularly in men; her life has no meaning or direction. She wants to change and doesn't know how. She has moved in temporarily with her aunt who lives in a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the Californian dream. There she meets Leilani, a dazzling nine year old with a leg brace, a deformed hand and a great spirit. Leilani's strange stepfather, Preston Maddoc, claims to have had a vision that aliens will either heal the girl by her tenth birthday or take her away to their world where she will have a better life. When Micky learns that Leilani had an older brother, who was also deformed and that he has now 'gone to the stars' she suspects that Maddoc killed the boy when a previous vision of healing aliens was not fulfilled. Leilani seems fearful...then the Maddocs disappear. No-one seems to care that Leilani may be dead by her tenth birthday - no-one except Micky. She sets out to find the Maddocs, for the first time caring about someone other than herself - and finds herself pitted against a fearsome, cunning adversary.