BURNOUT: A Novel

Michael Ren is seventeen when he walks into his father's bedroom and finds what's left of him. In the months that follow, his mother retreats into pills and alcohol. His only friend, Lily, pulls him into the drug trade to keep the lights on. And a prescription for Xanax becomes the only thing standing between Michael and the thoughts that won't stop. What begins as survival becomes something darker. Michael is smart - smart enough to build a supply chain, smart enough to manipulate the people around him, smart enough to justify everything he does. But he's not smart enough to see what he's becoming. As the bodies pile up and the pills stop working, Michael spirals toward a reckoning that will cost him everyone he's ever loved. BURNOUT is a raw, first-person literary debut about addiction, trauma, and the catastrophic distance between who we think we are and what we're capable of.