Big Green Country — A Novel

Big Green Country is a gripping family saga that lifts the veil on a shrouded secrecy surrounding the ugly underbelly of the complex cannabis culture in present day Northern California. Culling from her research as an independent journalist at home at the gateway to the region’s infamous Redwood Curtain, Rivetti paints a compelling portrait of the contemporary Green-Rush from one women-driven family’s perspective — the lure, the benefits, the potential for boom and bust, but most importantly, its impact on the human condition and the real and present danger posed to young women attracted by large cash earnings.

This unforgettable story reveals a hidden, lawless place through its compelling cast of women characters who take on what has until now been an overwhelmingly male dominated arena. Big Green Country is a controversial crisis of rural poverty, addiction, a broken health care system, alternative medicine and the stark reality of human trafficking within a region known as the Emerald Triangle. This is one family’s gritty story of resilience and tense sibling, mother/daughter/sister relationships, social justice and survival.

Despite her own individual struggles to repair her fractured life and relationships, Maggie must learn to deal with her own issues and past failures in order to muster the strength to save her missing eighteen-year-old trimmigrant niece Mia and the girl’s undocumented best friend before it’s too late. Fast-paced stakes continue to build as Maggie and her traveling companions take on the grim reality of this remote region’s natural and man-made threats. As the stakes grow, the importance of family rises above all.