Degotoga is a fantasy novel about Degu, an oversized misfit with borderline selective mutism. He is acutely self-conscious about his alopecia, and suffers from obnoxious, self-absorbed parents and a broken family heritage. Degu had just turned 18 when El-li-si, his Cherokee grandmother, was brought to live with his family due to her increasingly bizarre behaviors. She recently had taken to flopping around on the ground in a ritualistic dance and then urinating on herself. El-li-si hadn't spoken in 13 years when she turned to Degu with an urgent plea that his brother was in trouble. "Degotoga,...