The Seduction of Holly Blyss by Susan Jane Terry

This is a not a great literary masterpiece.  However, it’s a fun tell-all story. 

The novel captures a three-month period in the history of the “VACATION WONDERLAND”. 

Jamie Hart closed her business across from the “Emerald Triangle Garden” in the fall of 2009.  She had called it Bloomers, a garden shop. 

Possibly a decade too early in the legalized pot revolution, a group of Marijuana users rented the location for a Pot Garden.  This is their story.

My 2₵ worth of comment on this story and book is that Jamie moved into my house, 300 yds. east of the Gardens, after she closed Bloomers.  As a neighbor, I watched the activities at the Pot Garden for that next summer of 2010, but I was also on the Board of the Monte Rio Rec & Park, along with “Sugar” (Suzi) and “Mike”, side-line players in the novel’s action. 

Monte Rio is a small town in the wine country, population under a thousand.  Not much ever goes on here, so there is a stable market for gossip.  Thus a book like this is great cannon-fodder for a few months, while people try and figure out who’s who within the many characters of this book.  Who’s good and who’s bad.  Who’s revered and who’s disparaged.

The author makes it easy for the local reader to think they know some of the characters, if the reader already knows the real fictionalized person.  Vowel changes are common like Don becomes Dan.

The author has also used full literary license to raise the tie-dye realities of Monte Rio up three notches to Hollywood standards: all the women are beautiful and smart; all the men studly and desirable [I love this stuff: It’s Garrison Keillor: Where the women are strong; the men are good-looking, And all the children are above average], and the cars are usually Mercedes, the wine Dom Perignon in crystal.

This book follows in the tradition of John McCarty’s writings, like “In the Rough”.  This was also about the town elders versus the “people”, the focus being on a proposed plan to use beautiful Sheridan Ranch as an above ground septic processing plant.