Sugar House

Heroine Fenella Lundgren, a flat broke recent graduate, accepts a job as an assistant to the fabulously wealthy Rostunger family who live in a converted sugar factory, which also houses a private aquarium. Thurl and Nina Rostunger, her employers, begin to impose increasingly complex moral conundrums which compete with Fenella's need to survive financially and to help her friends and family.

Spanning the discovery of California by the Spanish through the 1990's, Sugar House is an alternative history of the decimation of an indigenous population, the Gold Rush, the Great Fire and Earthquake, the rise of industry and migration, The Summer of Love, notable crimes, as well as many other historic events.

When Fenella discovers a forgotten orphan and a cephalopod with supernatural abilities, she must navigate the moral murkiness between making a living and making oneself. Will Fenella and the octopus save their loved ones? Or will the mighty Sugar House bring about their downfall?

Allison Muir is a San Franciscan born writer and artist. During her varied career she has written and designed projects for ReadyMade magazine, coordinated postproduction for clients such as Industrial Light and Magic, Dreamworks and Pixar, and has produced and written for Al Gore's Current TV. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and she has been a regular performer at the Litquake literary festival in San Francisco, as well as KGB Bar in New York City. She is the lead singer of the all-female punk band The Gum Tree Girls. "Sugar House" is her debut novel. Find out more at www.sugarhousebook.com.