The Korvali allow no outsider to visit Korvalis. They forbid their citizens to leave. They're brilliant geneticists, but they refuse to share their genetic secrets with outsiders. Their xenophobia excludes them from the Orion Interplanetary Alliance, and the other planets don't like or trust them. And everyone tolerates the status quo... until a Korvali geneticist escapes his planet and takes refuge among humans on a starship. The Refugee—the first of the Korvali Chronicles series—tells the story of Eshel, the Korvali refugee, and Dr. Catherine Finnegan, the human geneticist who befriends him, as they face the political, scientific, and interpersonal ramifications of Eshel’s living among outsiders. From censoring of Eshel's scientific work to his learning to understand humans, struggles abound… until an alarming incident changes everything.