“Wildfire Weeds” is Now Available

Kindle Novel edition:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SW4Y1YN

Paperback Novel edition:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1543973612

“Wildfire Weeds” is the debut novel by Mori Natura. It’s a work of very recent historical fiction which begins as pastoral prose and builds to a cli-fi thriller at the climax.

Willow and Spruce Wilder are homesteading in rural Northern California where they have lived for decades. They finance their lives with the help of an annual crop of marijuana that allows them to work at home, tend their gardens, and read books in their leisure time. The Wilders live a semi-retired lifestyle on their ridge top property, looking over the idyllic countryside of Redwood Valley.

October 2017 comes to their small farm. We intimately relate with the Wilders for a week in their lives as they bring in their mature flowering pot plants: we meet the family members involved in the illicit substances business and we meet the crew that will support them in getting their product to market. The Wilders decide that with the threat of legalization looming over them, this will be their final weed harvest. Looking back on a lifetime of pot cultivation, the Wilders reflect on the trade that has sustained them. Environmentally savvy, the Wilders speak to the climate change elephant in the room regularly throughout the novel. With awareness, the characters avidly debate the factors that have contributed to shifting weather patterns, erosion, and the growing threat of fire danger. We watch as the Wilders prepare their homesite to be a more fire defensible space, in the light of recent close calls. Conscious of the fire ecology of the land, the Wilders move forward with their preparations while exploring the connection between fire management and California landscapes.

We follow them through their journeys of celebrating and protecting the land that they have lived on, stewarded, and received their sustenance from throughout “Wildfire Weeds.” As the week comes to a close, the Wilders encounter firsthand the wildfires that they have been fearing. Readers experience the perils of evacuation as a firestorm comes to the Wilder home.

*Mori is currently working on a series of novels about Utopia.