Overview

The outlandish story of a California backwoods ghost subdivision Who hasn't dreamed of tranquil country living? How many have instead found themselves stuck in a failed remote development like Mt. Shasta Vista? This is a darkly funny, deeply revealing portrait of the woebegone 60-year-old realm in the far northern reaches of California. The author, a 47-year resident, writes a casual history/memoir of the sprawling back-of-beyond hideaway which briefly gains national attention with the eye of a bemused anthropologist and timing of a deadpan humorist. He never treats the place as a caricature. Ward's sharp observations and nuanced appreciation of its contradictions show a wayward fondness for its eccentricities, frustrations and almost absurdist discombobulation. The resulting tension--a failed 1,641-lot subdivision with residents torn between the dream of peaceful country living and rude waking reality--gives the book real emotional weight. It's a tragicomic tale of an embryonic pioneering retirement community wrenched by conspiring forces: challenging terrain, grievous lack of infrastructure, rebellious Sixties back-to-the-landers, and seriously disenchanted speculators. Decades later, the plot thickens as the place is flooded by rogue cannabis growers snapping up cheap, long-vacant lots. The result is a vivid, funny and strangely touching story. Among related subjects explored: the Uniform Building Code; early off grid solar electricity and centralized electric power; the emergence of similar regional rural subdivisions as the historic Back-to-the-Land movement takes off; radical body freedom; changing California cannabis laws, and the resulting phenomenal rogue growing boom and systemic racism against Asian Americans, aggravated by illicit scaled grows. ""Welcome, Now Leave"" is part local history, part social satire, and part elegy for a strange, magical lotus land that forever seeks redemption and a place in the sun. It's a rare inside glimpse into a once-obscure corner of the American West.

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9781783243907

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Stuart R. Ward, 76, was born and raised in San Francisco. He has lived off grid in the remote Mt. Shasta Vista development he writes about here for most of his adult life. He dedicated 15 years volunteering at the nearby, much-beloved Stewart Mineral Springs resort, and he ran a successful business selling wholesale bulk pumice stone online nationwide before retiring. A lifelong writing enthusiast, his other books include ""Body Freedom Day: When a clothed-minded world unraveled."" This is his first nonfiction work.

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