Sourland — Ariel Delgado Dixon

After its matriarch's disappearace, two rival successors fight for control of a California weed farm in this visceral novel about whether we can ever outrun our true naturesMost weed farms in Humboldt 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 Garberville, her farm was a haven for wayward souls—rebel college kids, down on their luck townsfolk, rejects, neo-hippies, eco punks—anyone willing to work. Sapphire took them in and offered them a place to live and learn. Everything changes one weekend when Sapphire dissapears, her scorched truck found days later deep in the woods.Frankie, a hypercompetent, disgraced ex-ballerina and Sapphire's old girlfriend, returns to the farm and says that Sapphire promised her control of the land. When she arrives, she finds that Fizz—Sapphire's most recent lover—an ambitious former baseball player with a preternatural green thumb and colorful past, has already begun preparing Sourland for another harvest season.The farm’s fate hangs in the balance, and with it, the promise of the future Fizz and Frankie each once imagined for themselves. But their past demons remain hauntingly close, threatening to destroy the tenuous lifeline that control over the Sourland would offer them. And all the while, the specter of Sapphire looms over the farm: in cryptic notes, in the garden harvest, in every blade of grass and piece of dirt.A brilliantly constructed novel of intention, memory, and betrayal, Sourland sparkles with the beauty and grime of the California woods. Dixon's novel is about how our pasts, mistakes and true natures catch up to us all—despite our best intentions.