Burn Coast

A Novel

By: Dale Maharidge

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Zoë Vanderlip is missing. The Ark is empty. And nobody on McGee Ridge can agree about what exactly happened to her.

McGee Ridge, earthquake-rattled and clinging to the thousand-foot cliffs of the Northern California coast, is nestled in one of a very few truly wild places left in the Lower 48. It is also home to a band of off-grid outlaws who vanished behind the famed Redwood Curtain in the 1960s and whose time there is swiftly coming to an end.

Will Specter, a burned-out journalist for the Los Angeles Times, arrived here to build a wilderness cabin for himself in the ’90s, after spending a decade as a war correspondent. In a community that subsists mainly off illegal cannabis farming, Will is an outlier. So too is Zoë Vanderlip, the revered matriarch of the original '60s settlers, whose adult son Klaus is one of the largest growers in the region. Unlike nearly everyone else, neither Will nor Zoë has ever grown marijuana, but when Zoë suddenly goes missing from her home - a large hand-built structure known as the Ark - the industry’s competing forces can no longer be ignored.

Pairing up with Daniel Likowski, a principled but mysterious grower whose business has been crushed by legalization, Will finds himself swept into a world of lost idealism and desperate loners, mobsters and corporate shell companies, violence and hypocrisy, all operating beneath the canopy of an ancient forest teetering at the very edge of the continent.

Spurned on both by his journalistic zeal and a strange love for the place and its people, Will begins his investigation as a journey to understand not just what happened to Zoë but to all of them.

In this atmospheric rural noir, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dale Maharidge’s debut novel plunges listeners into a country that has existed for decades beyond the bounds of America-at-large but nevertheless reflects the essential conflicts of our divided culture.

©2022 by Dale Maharidge (P)2022 by Blackstone Publishing

Very Good

I really liked this book. I especially loved the narrator - he was wonderful! I did feel as though the story was not yet finished and
I was left with many unanswered questions. Perhaps there will be a 2cnd book. I hope so.

Burn Coast

I enjoyed Burn Coast! I was really interesting learning about Marijuna Growing! Learning a little History about California’s Canabus growing history!

get back to the land

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I wonder how much was true. The characters were well made.

A dark, lyrical sense of history and place

Beautiful language suffuses this weighty story and summons a powerful sense of place and character. I loved listening to this wonderfully narrated novel.

Interesting!

Hard to comment on much about this book without giving too much away. The story was told in a laid back way, but covered tough situations and times for it's characters. I wasn't sure whether I would like it, but I did.

A great story!

Excellent character development in this well read novel of an interesting time in US history.

A new great American novel?

This story is beautifully written and provides an intersectional portrait of our recent past. I really enjoyed this reading, the narrator was a great choice.

ah

took quit a while for the story to evolve. Like 3 hours. Then it got interesting, sort of. Overall, it was okay. if it hadn't been on sale when I got it I would have been very disappointed. But for the price it got it, it was fine.

Vivid memories

Having lived in Northern California and Southern Oregon my entire 65 years this novel bought back many memories, good and bad. I hope there is a sequel as there is so much more going on in the pot/hemp and meth business right now.

Surprise and very good

I don’t normally read this genre and yet this was really great. Held my attention and had a wonderful cast of characters that were well developed.