Ariel Delgado Dixon is the author of Sourland, out June 23rd from Random House. Below, she discusses why she set her new novel on a weed farm.
The best and worst day I ever had was spent haying. I was a new farmhand, and it was the last searingly dry summer day suitable for harvesting hay, which required tossing fifty-pound square bales up onto a moving flatbed, then unloading them again, bale by bale, into the barn.
There were three of us in long sleeves, pink-faced, scratchy with chaff. I almost threw up. But the shame of being the broken link in the chain is powerful, and somehow I kept going, surprising myself when I came back the next day for more.
Farming is like that: pained, jubilant, cooperative. When I wrote Sourland, set on a weed farm in Northern California, I wanted it to contain that full spectrum, the sowing and the reaping both.
A farm is a little universe, down to the microbes in the soil, up to the thousand-pound, dome-eyed beasts they call livestock, and beyond, into clouds and weather.
A novel is the same, a wordy terrarium. Sprinkle in illicit drugs and the stakes climb. Droughts, mold, pests, and piss-poor luck are standard hazards of cultivation, but marijuana is the great compounder.
There is the law to contend with, not to mention rippers, double-crossers, the fickle violence of the black market. It’s the price of doing business, and a way of life.
In Sourland, I wanted to preserve this proud strain of outlaw farmer, and pay tribute to this pocket of the Wild West before it’s gone like smoke in the wind.