Marco Polo and The Sunshine Rebellion

The desert is shimmering. The trash is glowing. The golf carts are misfiring.
Marco doesn't believe in magic.
But magic might believe in him.
*****
Marco didn't ask to join the Kitten Brigade.
He's thirteen, skeptical, and raised by scientists. His summer job inspecting sprinklers at the old desert golf course was supposed to be quiet.
But after a run-in with three aggressive ravens and a lounge singer with a kitten basket, Marco is conscripted into a feline mission-with one very specific task: locate an elusive orange cat inside a luxury retirement community.
At the first brigade meeting-held inside his parents' condo-he meets a cast of eccentric allies: a unicorn-obsessed child, a retired firefighter, a former NASA scientist, and a growing circle of outsiders who don't quite fit the rules.
As strange forces begin to shimmer through the desert, Marco must decide what he believes-about science, about stories, and about the people no one else sees.
A California fairy tale about hope, misfits, and the kind of magic that doesn't ask permission.