Ike Jaeger is off to college, earning a degree he may put to use colonizing Planet Valhalla, or designing a warp generator that will revolutionize time-space jumps. But he’s not going to let classes, studying, or homework distract him from what’s most important: football, hot rods, and girls.

Handpicked by Coach Stauchel, Ike steps into the limelight as the starting quarterback for the Yosemite Pumas. With the weight of the team’s aspirations on his shoulders, leading them to victory outweighs maintaining a low profile.

Scholarly pursuits may fail to interfere with gridiron glory, but unforeseen misadventures just might: a wrong turn into a postapocalyptic future, an ill-fated obsession with fighting in World War Two, and encounters with an array of vivacious vixens. Will the clairvoyant African prophetess in 1960 Sierra Leone capture his heart? What about the glamorous Hollywood hopeful in 1942, or the vampish Marxist professor teaching his political science class at Yosemite Polytechnic?

Ike escaped his own dystopian destiny, but Fate is a vindictive mistress, hell-bent on dragging him back into her cruel clutches. Will she gain revenge with a blind-side cheap shot by a hulking defensive lineman, by using communist occupational forces to blow his antique fighter plane out of the sky, or by exposing Ike as a time-traveling fugitive from an alternate reality to cross-continuum assassins?

Paradox is much more than a time-traveling rags-to-riches adventure. It’s the epic adventure of a boy who perhaps was never supposed to be presented a chance to strive for greatness…but was anyway. In Defying Fate, that boy is now an adult–but the journey to manhood is far from over.