The Sugar Rush: A Memoir of Wild Dreams, Budding Bromance, and Making Maple Syrup

Gregg’s gleeful debut recounts how he and his best friend, Bert Jones, got into the maple syrup business. The two became friends after meeting in a poker league and starting a “seven-piece dad band” in Upstate New York. In 2013, they decided to build a sugarhouse on Gregg’s property, which straddles the Vermont state line, and convert tree sap to syrup as a hobby. Though they produced just under three pounds of syrup in their best year, Gregg decided in January 2022 that he wanted to “hold [his] head high at the urinal” beside Vermont’s commercial syrup producers, who average five pounds per year. Jones jumped at the idea, and together, the men fought squirrels, equipment mishaps, and inclement weather as they spent the winter and early spring trying to meet their benchmark. Gregg’s effortless humor lifts the proceedings as he describes reactions from mystified family members and gently ribs his partner (“Bert tends to move at the velocity of plate tectonics”). Readers will quickly develop a taste for this. (July)