Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco

Home Baked is well written, meticulously researched, and verified with interviews, but not at all academic or stuffy. Alia Volz paints beautiful portraits of the times, the city she loves, and her mother, Meridy, the Brownie Lady, who has never conformed or “gone straight”. Meridy is a fascinating character. Although she baked and peddled magic brownies for years, she can barely cook. An artist with a strong personality, she yielded to her husband’s (wrong-headed) vision that she would bear him a son. And she throws the I Ching before making any decision.

Memoir readers will enjoy this book, although it is not exactly a memoir. The author wasn’t even alive for more than half of its content. History buffs may also like it and, in today’s environment of edibles, decriminalization, and medical marijuana clinics, many readers will be astonished at how many years of imprisonment one could face for having even small amounts of pot.

No history of San Francisco in the 60s, 70s, and 80s can be told without including gay liberation, Harvey Milk, Dan White, Jim Jones…They’re all here, along with vivid descriptions of the city in the days before Fisherman’s Wharf became a tourist mecca, before AIDS ravaged the Castro, and before tech bros made every coffee shop their satellite office.

Warning: you may become hungry as you gobble up this book!