Much of the story in Kenny G. Down’s debut novel, Awakened Giant, Sleeping Spirit, is ripped from the headlines of his own life. For years Down struggled with his own addictions – to alcohol and drugs – even as he built a successful career in the fishing industry, eventually becoming the President and CEO of a major Northwest seafood company. His experience being homeless by choice – first as a troubled teenager and again by circumstance in the final days of his addiction – underpin the characters, all of whom Down has been in one way or another.

Neither memoir nor tell-all, this book is intended as a spiritual novel, with lessons for everyone – not just alcoholics and addicts – in every chapter.

While fictional, Down deliberately put himself and his life into the story. "I put myself into every character in the book and I invite the reader to do the same, regardless of their background," says Down.

The former CEO left his position in the corporate world in 2018 and can now focus on his writing and spiritual work. Down is a well-known figure in the sustainable seafood business world where he has helped to set national ocean and fisheries policy and for which he still consults. Through his novel, he is revealing an even more meaningful part of his life.

His life started out as turbulent as the Alaska fisheries. Down grew up, the son of an alcoholic mother and an alcoholic step-father.  He discovered alcohol and drugs at an early age and soon found himself on the wrong side of the law. He was in an out of jail even before high school.

At 17, his grandfather sent him to Alaska to learn to fish. By 23 he was among the youngest licensed chief engineers. But fishing boats were rife with alcohol and drugs. “It was like the wild-wild west back then,” Down recalls. There were no Coast Guard drug tests. “Our mantra was, ‘play hard while you work.’” On the boats, his addiction only deepened.

The heavy-drinking fishermen were concerned by Down’s ability to imbibe. “There was something about the intensity of my drinking that bothered them,” he remembers. In those days, Down drank as much as he could as fast as he could. “I drank with an urgency – there was an emergency to get as much in as quickly as possible,” he says.

He was eventually unable to work and after several failed attempts at alcoholic treatment he returned to Seattle where he couldn’t get or hold a job. Down remembers the downward spiral where the camaraderie of social drinking turned to an isolated solitary pursuit for the next drink or drug. In those years, he used only to try to quench his obsession for more.

It wasn’t until he found himself camped out in a cardboard lean-to behind a McDonald’s that he finally hit bottom. From there, his story changed, and he rebuilt his life and career, over the next thirty years. Some of that journey is contained in Awakened Giant, Sleeping Spirit.