POINT DUME

At Point Dume in Malibu, Ellis Gardner was surfing the waves long before the super-rich descended upon her sleepy blue-collar town. Ellis's friends can no longer afford to live in their own hometown, but some have discovered that selling locally grown marijuana can bring in extra income. It's big business and very dangerous.

Ellis isn't interested in making friends with the fancy newcomers-but that doesn't stop her from having an affair with ultra-spoiled Frank. He's realizing his fantasy of producing his own wine from his private vineyard overlooking the ocean. But Frank's wife, Janice, is bored. Smoking weed from morning till night is Janice's only way to cope with her isolated lifestyle and self-absorbed husband. Many Malibu residents don't even realize that the marijuana on the market is mostly grown in their own backyards. Men like Felix tends to pot fields run by Mexican drug rings, risking their lives in exchange for the promise of a better future. But when a natural disaster threatens everyone's livelihood, their paths collide. Katie Arnoldi is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Wentworths and Chemical Pink. She is a native Californian and has surfed Point Dume. In researching this story, Katie hiked through marijuana fields and writes about testing variations of marijuana. For more stories behind the book, please visit www.katiearnoldi.com