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.
