When twenty-four year old Holly came to the river, she didn't know what promise the summer would hold. Yet more than a change of seasons would occur over the summer in the small river town of Monte Rio, California. That summer, the remote village, barely touched by time, was sure the devil himself moved in when marijuana grower and broker, Ric Deleone, decided to shake things up, threatening the status quo. Ric's Pot Gardens Café was a world of inclusion with no differentiation between the players, the sweet, gentle freaks who ran away from towns all over the country without anyone noticing, people who weren't missed, who came to the world's edge, a place so remote that no one would bother looking for them even if they did miss them. To these fortune seekers, marijuana was emerald-green gold that sparkled with the promise of riches for anyone strong enough to cultivate the rich, red earth. Ramblers with little to leave behind, seduced by media reports of a new gold rush in California, who thought they had found paradise, a veritable Garden of Weedan, traveled far to claim their personal pot of gold buried at the bottom of the rainbow crossing the muddy-green Russian River. The few who found gold would hold it at all cost, leaving the new prospectors to discover a paradise disrupted by change and a deeply divided community conflicted by issues tougher than their power to solve them. Eventually the trees would grow taller, the ivy and the blackberries would choke the forest and the ferns would widen as the novelty of change and the disruption in people's lives became yesterday's news. It would be the same for Holly Blyss Chadwick. She came to the old summer-house to heal her heart. Instead it was shattered by those she trusted as love turned to lies and promise became deception. As autumn loomed, what lay behind summer would haunt her like the Ghost of Christmas Future, with last year's presents still wrapped under the tree. The season had come. The season had gone. What would remain revealed a future that long ago became the present. A community squeezed between the past and the future would have to come to grips with a changing world and hard economic realities. One person, Ric Deleone, decided to take a chance on the region's hottest opportunity, challenge the status quo and push authority to the limit. Could he prevail to bring a divided community together again or rip it irreparably to pieces? While the summer winds blew, the mystery, murkier than the dark green river, would further deepen, people taking sides and arguing tough realities. Who would prevail in the mountain drama between the haves, the have-nots and the wannabes? A little corruption goes a long way when it's accompanied by a lot of cold, hard cash. Big Weed greases a lot of palms. Not everybody can get in on the action. That's the way folks like it. That was the problem on the river that summer. Riches don't grow on trees. Before all the magnolia leaves drifted to the ground in the autumn chill, the pieces of the mystery would fall where expected. When the dust settled, the locals would be scratching their heads, not knowing who the villains were in this mountain drama, not knowing if things would ever be the same when the summer season ended. In a quiet place where nothing happened, something very big was about to occur, changing the people and their world in ways they couldn't imagine and never saw coming. The Holly Blyss Chadwick Mystery Series
About the Author: Susan Terry, author of Out of the Dust, a Survivor's Tale, is winner of the Jessamyn West award. She currently lives in Northern California and is writing a second book in the Holly Blyss Chadwick Mystery Series to be published in the the fall of 2014.