WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream - By Dave Wilkinson

WITCHGRASS: a pipe dream, a novel by Dave Wilkinson portrays shattered lives and conflicted families as a New England town splits apart.

What if a Vietnam helicopter suddenly landed in your back yard? The town of New Salem, Maine faces an invasion of military operations, secret spies and child-parent betrayal that sets a peaceful rural county spinning.

Carolyn Chute, author of best-selling The Beans of Egypt, Maine, “cry-laughed and laugh-cried through a book more important than most of what they give kids to read in school.”

Witchgrass: a pipe dream sweeps the reader into a quiet world turned upside down by the War on Drugs. An afternoon invasion becomes a multi-faceted dramedy as marijuana-hunting helicopters cause confusion and panic one summer during the early 1990s.

School children, sheriffs, professors and prosecutors play their parts in a story about one of America’s major social issues. Emotions boil in the culture clash over cannabis, a matter which divides parent from child, employee from company, husband from wife.

As the story comes to its unexpected and riotous climax, Maine in the Bush One era becomes a positive vision of future enlightenment. In its non-judgmental portrayal of cannabis users, this novel brightens the image of much-maligned pot smokers.

Witchgrass: a pipe dream is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels, also at selected bookstores.

Small town fights back
by Hoam Rogh
Dave Wilkinson's new book, Witchgrass, does not disappoint. It has the entire gamut of insanity that results from marijuana prohibition. People are marginalized, arrested, tormented and killed for no good reason at all.

The story moves through its pages in punchy prose. As the seasons change the story of a small town's battle with the marijuana law and its consequences unfolds. The reader is provided with a world filled with vivid scenes and true characters.

The good guys in the book do not wear uniforms or arrest people, rather they live good lives. They raise children, garden and try to enjoy their lives. But that's not what the government has planned for them. State police drop in with a helicopter and start seizing the contraband and anything else they can get their greedy little mitts on.

This is the sort of story that needs to be told. There is no reason why we need to live in a police state for marijuana. It doesn't do any of the negative health effects that were claimed when it was prohibited. Instead, as the book beautifully tells, marijuana prohibition tears families apart with government approved squads of armed thugs. This law has got to stop. Read "Witchgrass" to learn how one small town fought back.

About the author

Dave Wilkinson wrote ordinances which produced the first municipal vote for marijuana legalization since the 1970s.  The vote of Starks, Maine in 1992 was years ahead of California’s Proposition 215 in 1996 and Maine’s Medical Marijuana Act of 1999.

In 2006, with Producer Marilyn Taylor, Wilkinson created incredibleMAINE, a half-hour weekly TV show on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. He has twice been Emmy nominated for Directing the award-winning show. Witchgrass: a pipe dream is his first novel.

Contact: Dave Wilkinson
Davewilk@suscom-maine.net
(207) 778-6535