The Boxer Gate

Manny and Jonas Hahn are brilliant brothers with two things in common: a deep but unspoken connection and an unrelenting quest to truly understand what makes us human. Manny, a genetic scientist, believes that this understanding will come from unlocking the genome's secrets, particularly since his quirky and often misunderstood genius allows him to see hidden patterns within what contemporary science calls the "nonsense' sections of DNA. But never in his wildest imaginings could he realize how awe-inspiring the results of his work would be. Unlike Manny, Jonas, his younger brother, had always struggled with science. Abandoning a career as a physicist he becomes a priest, rejecting modern man's efforts to redefine nature, frustrated with science's inability to understand the most rudimentary physical forces governing the universe. While trying to embrace a more spiritual life and the great leaps of faith needed to do so, Jonas chooses a path of knowledge that also allows room for the unknowable. The two brothers obsessively follow their independent and conflicting courses of inquiry, only to be plunged into crisis by their horrifying discovery. Regardless, they press doggedly onward, and damn the consequences, as they come perilously close to answering the ultimate questions of who we are and what happens to us after we die... Boxer Gate is a medical thriller, a science mystery, and a spiritual odyssey whose complex, introspective characters are caught in a cycle of drama and discovery that takes them to regions uncharted and unimagined. The fields of contemporary physics, mathematics, medicine, and genomics are plumbed for insights in this work of scientifically supportable fiction, which unlocks the ultimate human mystery-and reveals that mankind is likely ill prepared for the result.

Mark Colby is originally from Spokane Washington, and now lives in the rolling hills of the rural Japanese countryside with his dog Mabel. He is the author of the Japan Healthcare Debate (Global Oriental 2004) and Negotiating the Gray Maze (co-author) (Floating World Press 1997). He regularly speaks and writes about issues relating to medicine, science and healthcare.