Pawer is based in an alternate reality where genetically engineered people created from animal DNA, called pawers, are fighting their own civil rights movement to no longer be recognized as pets or seen as having a futile existence. The story explores equality, acceptance, discrimination, identity, culture, as well as multiple themes surrounding diversity.
Sunny Jones, a sixteen-year-old pawer who is half human and struggling to discover her own identity, has been pretending to be a human to fit into a world which refuses to acknowledge her very existence. Due to this, the teenager only truly understands half of her life, the human mother who raised her while her pawer father was forced to reside miles away, under ownership. Her world flips upside-down when she meets another pawer for the first time, and in doing so, finally experiences the culture she had always been denied experiencing. With her new found friend's guidance, Sunny becomes enthralled by the world changing around her and meets many new characters who help her grow into her own, and the mystery surrounding her own biological roots.