Astro Ari

Ari M. Albright is a twenty-one-year-old college dropout living with her judgmental boyfriend and working at a dead-end job in present-day San Francisco. She suffers from debilitating anxiety, which confines her to a life of safe choices, nonadventure, and prescription medications. Ari's one solace is music, and one night at an outdoor concert, she can't help but make a wish on a floating star; a wish to escape the anxiety that has plagued her entire life, a wish to find a group of people who will understand and accept her for who she is, a wish to find peace.

Little does she know, her wishes are about to come true when her boss demands she take a mandatory vacation to avoid paying the rising overtime wages. Ari decides to go to Hawaii and plans to stay at a yoga retreat at the base of Mauna Kea. What she gets, however, is more than she could have ever imagined when her airport shuttle driver, Jake, drives past the Hoku Lewa retreat and up to a stone cavern on the side of Hawaii's tallest volcano.

What will Ari find when she walks through the cave opening and into the unknown? Will she find the key to being happy on Earth, a planet in which she feels so disconnected and lost?

Astro Ari, Part 1: M16 is an out-of-this world journey of self-discovery, fantastic adventures, and most of all, love.