Thirteen-year-old Joshua Parker is "kidnapped" by his mother, spirited away for the summer to take care of his ailing grandmother. But once they arrive at the old house, crowded with memories, he begins to wonder about mysterious Uncle Patrick. Patrick has been dead for years -- he died at fourteen, in 1959. Where is his grave? Why are there no pictures of him? The simplest questions about his uncle make everyone in the family uncomfortable. When Joshua discovers Uncle Patrick's stash of rare 1950s UFO magazines and his photographically realistic drawings of alien spaceships, he realizes that Patrick had remarkable abilities -- so why doesn't anyone want to remember him? Thinking that her son deserves some answers, Joshua's mother starts to write the history of Patrick's "last" summer. Reading it on the sly, Joshua realizes that her story matches up exactly, precisely, with his new computer game, AlienState 3 -- a cult favorite. What really happened to Uncle Patrick? Did he really die? Was he taken by aliens? Or was he taken...somewhere else?