“Everywhere the drum goes, so goes the gun…” Aric Hatch is a 16-year-old drummer for the British Army, and newly orphaned, at the edges of a battlefield during the bloodiest year of the American Revolution. Wandering among the dead, wondering what to do, he encounters another boy—“Orion.” Who seems to manifest out of nothing. Is he a boy at all? The two of them, alone together, then with Akt’adia, the young woman who’s become chief of a local Native American tribe, embark on a dangerous adventure. Dodging the enemy, suffering the elements—and growing closer even as they find themselves farther from their home worlds. Healing Star is a coming-of-age story about the gateways we can find in our traumas if only we can muster the courage (and the company) to face them.