When she finally decides to take her first hit of pot, sixteen-year-old MacKenzie Fraser witnesses a drunk driver mow down Tessa, her seven-year-old sister. And when authorities trump up a charge for criminal possession of an opiate-laced drug, Mac is spirited away to spend no fewer than eighteen months in juvenile detention. Dealing, not only with the death of her sister but a grizzly incarceration, Mac experiences moments of escape by wishing away to fantastical realms of consciousness. If that’s not enough, her mother blames Mac for Tessa’s death and gives away her cat, April, to someone she doesn’t know. So, when Mac’s fantasies turn dark, she tries to stop the gouging pain of grief from her sister's death, from her parents path toward divorce, and ultimately from crimes committed against her while inside juvie. HOW THE DEER MOON HUNGERS is a story of one girl’s struggle---to understand how life can go careening out of control into an abyss when all you want is for life to simply stop.

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"How the Deer Moon Hungers" has won seven book awards, including a first place award in the 2020 Chanticleer Somerset Awards, a Silver Award in the 2021 eLit Book Awards, the 2020 SABA Book Awards for the Judge’s Selection “Best Fiction Author,” Best Fiction in the 2020 Pacific Book Award, a Silver Award in the 2020 Moonbeam Children's Book Award, and July 2020 Book Cover in the Book Cover of the Month Awards.