Sourland — Ariel Delgado Dixon

Two rivals, in business and love, fight for control of a California marijuana farm in this visceral novel about succession, sex, and whether we can ever outrun our true natures.

Most weed farms in Northern California don't last more than a season, but there was always Sourland. And where there was Sourland, there was Sapphire. Hidden in the woods of Humboldt County, her farm was a haven for wayward souls -- rebel college kids, down on their luck outlaws, rejects, neo-hippies -- anyone willing to work. Sapphire took them in and offered them a place to live and learn. But everything changes when Sapphire goes missing, her scorched truck abandoned on a mountain road.

Frankie, a disgraced ballerina and Sapphire's former right-hand woman, returns to Sourland and claims that Sapphire promised her control of the farm. When she arrives, she finds that Fizz -- Sapphire's most recent lover, an ex-college baseball player with a preternatural green thumb -- has already begun prepping Sourland for its biggest harvest yet.

The farm's fate hangs in the balance, and with it, the future Fizz and Frankie each imagine for themselves. Past demons remain hauntingly close, as do enemies and scorned admirers who threaten to destroy Sourland and its legacy. All the while, the specter of Sapphire looms over the farm: in cryptic notes, in bud-tender gossip, in every blade of grass and whorl of smoke.

A brilliantly constructed novel of desire, reinvention, and betrayal, Sourland sparkles with the beauty and grime of the California woods. Dixon's novel is about how our true natures catch up to us all -- no matter how far we run.