Witchgrass

New novel lampoons Drug War. 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.