Eartha & Aetherias is an illustrated journey set in a planetary utopia in the late 22nd century, on the Hawaiian island of Maui and, also, while traveling through space.
It is an art book and a coloring book. Alicia Bay Laurel hand-lettered the entire book in her cursive script, and illustrated the pages with her flowing surrealist ink line drawings. This edition is identical to the deluxe color edition of Eartha & Aetherias, except that the interior pages are printed in monochrome (premium black and white) instead of premium four-color process. The four-color front cover bears the words "monochrome interior edition" at the top of the image.
As in most of Alicia Bay Laurel's previous illustrated books, the figures in the drawings are mostly unclothed, so this is not a children's book.
Eartha, born into a warm and creative tribal family, doesn't feel at home among humans; she prefers the company of light beings who are invisible to her human kin and friends. Aetherias is an ageless extraterrestrial who travels as a light wave, and longs for his missing mate, who he last saw flying toward the Earth. He determines to find her.
What neither know is that incarnating as a human on planet Earth causes instant amnesia. She meets him in a dream as he lands in human form in a meadow near the remote rural village where she lies sleeping. They feel immense attraction to one another, but neither knows who the other is. Worse still, when they meet again, Eartha is not the light being she had been in her dream, but, instead, in human form, and Aetherias doesn't realize she is the same being he had embraced the entire night before, who had appeared to him then as a floating woman made of light.
Thus, they begin their separate heroic journeys to find one another again. As they continue, they are encouraged and assisted by wise elder light beings with whom they communicate. Aetherias discovers that the human travelers he has joined on his quest have considerable spiritual gifts of their own, and they help him to learn the power of community. Meanwhile, Eartha liberates her soul, remembers her true identity, and comes to appreciate the love of her human family.
