Written in first person narrative, Martian Runaway centers on twelve-year-old West DeLine, the only child of a career focused and emotionally distant mother. When his mom's job forces them to once again move to a new city, the boy realizes it will mean more lost friends and starting over at yet another new school. Frustrated and lonely in his empty life, he decides to run away and find the father he's never known. The fact that his dad happens to live on the planet Mars doesn't deter the over-confident adolescent. Stealing aboard a Mars bound rocket West soon finds himself in a fantastical glass domed city, where he's confronted by the similar yet often different realities of living on the Red Planet. Through haphazard ingenuity he eventually manages to locate his father. Along the way, the challenges of Mars' vast, inspiring, and often dangerous landscape provides an unexpected path for the boy's own self-discovery.