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 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 could be an image breakthrough for much-maligned pot smokers.

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