In the middle of the Northern US Rocky Mountains there’s a giant bowl created from a glacial lake that drained out ages ago. Inside the bowl are two rivers, five fertile valleys and a single canyon entrance—”Hell’s Gate”—which is the only chink in the mountain walls for miles through which you can pass from East to West. 

Past the canyon choke point is a town, Missoula, and in that town there once lived a seventeen year old Michael Turner. Tall and lean like a bean pole with hair cut short ever since sophomore year when his basketball teammates held him down and shaved off the “bowl cut”. Michael Turner’s eyes were bright and brown, glimmering in the cold December day as school let out on a Friday, the best Friday for at least a thousand years: Friday, December 31st nineteen, ninety-nine. An electricity hung in the air so he stood up tall on the tailgate of his truck, stretching his arms out wide like wings—free—and shouted over the sea of students, “Anton! Zach!” When his friends looked up at him he threw a fist in the air, “It’s the MILLENNIUM!”

Michael Turner is a complete 117,000-word novel.

Doug is just getting the hang of his first year of High School when something out of the ordinary starts to happen to him. At first it is just a few weird things, like an unquenchable thirst and having to pee every fifteen minutes. But when he starts to lose weight and turns pale, he can no longer hide from the truth. His teachers start to notice and he ends up in the hospital.

Doctor Horvath treats Doug and gives him his diagnosis–Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus. Doug starts out on his journey of finger pricks, needles and low blood sugars, all while navigating the ins and outs of teenage life. Can he ever be at peace with the one thing that he wishes he could change about himself?

The Sugar Siphon is a novel about the things we wish we could change about ourselves but can’t, and eventually must learn to embrace.