Alex was a get-rich-quick motherfucker. He was a proud dropshipper who never once laid his hands on actual merchandise. His automated system took online orders and activated shipments from warehouses around the globe. All Alex had to do was hang out in his bedroom and keep an eye on his favorite dating app.  

Mary was a bored housewife who sat on her couch watching Wheel of Fortune from morning till night. Ordering a cheapie lemon sprayer from Alex’s company Business Industry LLC provided a hit of dopamine that helped her get through the day. 

What Mary received in the mail, unfortunately, wasn’t a cute, little kitchen gadget. She opened up the package and found a strange orb wrapped in a nest of shredded paper. It was some sort of fantastic egg—cold like stone and smooth as marble. The smell of sulfur, struck limestone and fungus immediately made her gag. 

When the mysterious egg hatched a few minutes later, a gangly monster emerged. It looked like something you’d see a 4-H kid make at the county fair—slightly humanoid, like vegetables glued together, and sitting in a hot barn for a few days. 

Aghast, Mary put the creature on ice and stuffed it into the trunk of her car. She was determined to drive to the company’s headquarters in Illinois and rub the abomination in Alex’s face. 

Like Mary, Alex was mortified when he saw the pint-sized monster. As a dropship merchant, he had nothing to do with the shipment, but he figured there were probably more freaky creatures being sent through the mail. (Spoiler alert: he was right.) As a result, Alex and Mary decided to team up and drive to the east coast and infiltrate the original distribution warehouse. 

Even though author Stephanie Sanders-Jacob refers to the drive across America as Mary’s hero quest, I’m not 100 percent sure that’s correct. Is Mary the hero of Dropshipped? That’s debatable. 

It’s young Alex, I think, who best represents the 12 steps of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.” He commits to the adventure, couples with a mentor, defeats the monster queen and returns to his (new) family. Maybe I’m wrong—it’s totally possible that Alex and Mary were characters participating in a dual monomyth. I would love to hear the author’s opinion on this. 

While driving to the coast, the pair noticed fewer and fewer cars on the freeway, seeing instead broken and bloodied bodies, missing limbs and squished organs like roadkill. It was obvious the little dropship critters were on a bender. 

It was all too much, they agreed. Whoever was sending the tiny effigies through the mail needed to be stopped. Together, Mary, the lonely housewife, and Alex, the get-rich-quick motherfucker, vowed to end the carnage. They were on a Heroes’ Journey to save the world.  

[ Dropshipped / By Stephanie Sanders-Jacob / First Printing: July 2025 / ISBN: 9781763725614 ]