One of Entertainment Weekly's "Books to Read in April" One of Reader's Digest's “Best Reads From the 2020 Quarantine Book Club” One of She Reads' "Most Anticipated Memoirs of 2020" One of Alma's "Favorite Books for Spring 2020" Included on 7x7's "Spring Reading List: Books by Bay Area Authors" “The subtitle, ‘My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco’ tells you much of what you need to know in terms of content. But as a portrait of a heroics, innovation, grit, and pot-baking in an epidemic (in this case, the AIDS crisis), it's also strikingly relevant. And beautifully written, too.”—Entertainment Weekly, “Books to Read in April” "I devoured this book! Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, a savvy business woman, a social and medicinal revolution: What’s not to love? This is a story Alia Volz was born to tell."—Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks “Proves sometimes truth is stranger than fiction…[This] heartwarming, sharply witty book details the author’s life as the daughter of an underground baker who mixed up thousands of brownies infused with medical marijuana for AIDS patients in mid-80s San Francisco. It’s a touching story of eccentric families and the unusual bonds that bring people together.”—Reader’s Digest, “The Best 14 Reads From the 2020 Quarantine Book Club” "In Home Baked, Alia Volz manages not only to write about her parents with clear-eyed compassion and empathy, she also gives us a rich history of San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. As I read, her family and the city came alive for me: every person and street were vivid, complicated, tragic, and beautiful. I loved this engrossing, informative, funny, and heartbreaking book. Volz is a true talent." —Edan Lepucki, bestselling author of Woman No. 17, California, and others "A hilarious, heartfelt, and unforgettable debut. I gobbled it up like a pan of fresh-baked brownies. Having come of age in the Bay Area when the Sticky Fingers operation was at its height, I devoured every last morsel of this evocative and occasionally heartbreaking tale, which is as much a deep dive into San Francisco’s weird and fast-evolving weed scene as it is about Volz’s unforgettable family. 'Eat it, baby!' was the bakery’s motto: for Alia’s wonderful book, I say 'Read it, baby!'" —Julia Flynn Siler, bestselling author of The White Devil’s Daughters, The House of Mondavi and others "Home Baked is a deeply touching, funny, wise, and magical book. By telling her eye-popping family story and transporting her readers back to the kaleidoscope days of Northern California in the last quarter of the 20th Century, Alia Volz gives us not only an indelible memoir but also an intimate social history of the mom and pop marijuana business and how it revolutionized the world. With Home Baked, Volz joins the colorful parade of writers who have brought 'San Francisco Values' fully to life, including Hunter S. Thompson, Armistead Maupin, Warren Hinckle, Diane di Prima, Richard Brautigan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Dave Eggers and Michelle Tea.—David Talbot, bestselling author of Season of the Witch and The Devil's Chessboard "Home Baked hit me with the joy and sting of recognition. Here is a heroine I understand: a bad-ass mom doing legitimate yet illegal work that provided for her daughter, but also shaped a community. This wonderfully written memoir delivers a world of risk and drugs and secrecy alongside heavy batches of love and wit and courage. Alia Volz deftly blends in social context with her coming-of-age story, concocting a fantastic history lesson on everything from marijuana laws to the AIDS crisis to the transformation of San Francisco, where she herself was home-baked. I loved this book, got high off its intoxicating allure; long after I read the last page, I couldn’t come down."—Bridgett M. Davis, author of The World According To Fannie Davis "The unheralded story of San Francisco's trailblazing 'Brownie Lady' plays out across more than 20 tumultuous years of the city's often tragic history...[Volz] combines a journalist's eye for detail with a storyteller's sense of humanity to chronicle all the incredible highs and lows, both public and private...The author's firsthand depiction of AIDS and its devastating initial impact on San Francisco's residents rings with epic tragedy. Thankfully, there are plenty of triumphs in the Sticky Fingers saga as well, and Volz herself embodies just one of them. A sometimes-sad yet stirring love letter to San Francisco filled with profundity and pride." —Kirkus Reviews "Volz had been a part of her mother’s special marijuana-brownie business for as long as she could remember...From the turbulent ’70s through the ravages of the AIDS crisis (during which Mer and Alia distributed marijuana to AIDS patients), Volz recounts her mother’s exploits with admiration, along the way tracing how attitudes about cannabis have shifted toward more acceptance."—Booklist "San Francisco native Alia Volz has a helluva story to tell...[Home Baked] tells the story of the author’s family’s rewarding sideline during the 1970s and ’80s, delivering roughly 10,000 cannabis-powered brownies a month—Sticky Fingers Brownies, for those who might remember—to customers around the Bay Area, including those suffering through the early days of the AIDS crisis."—Good Times, "New Titles from NorCal Authors for Your Reading List" "The prologue of Home Baked starts with Alia Volz writing about her elementary school participating in D.A.R.E., an anti-drug program started by Nancy Reagan. But, Volz writes, 'We were the people the cop warned my class about.' So sets the stage for her memoir, which tells about how her mom operated Sticky Fingers Brownies — a marijuana edibles business — out of their San Francisco home...Read if you’re into: Jewish moms! Weed! San Francisco! Memoirs! Home Baked has it all." —Alma, "Favorite Books for Spring 2020" “Home Baked is a version of a bootstrap story so unusual and crazy-cool it’s hard to look away from, let alone put down...What a coming of age story—in the personal, but also in the larger sense of an era in San Francisco fueled by music, dancing, and being high that evolves into the City Hall murders and the devastation of AIDS. Home Baked kept me up late reading from start to finish.” —Sheryl Cotleur, Copperfield’s Books “Home Baked is an exhilarating, kaleidoscopic book that—with exceptional writerly skill—captures an era of San Francisco history that impacted the entirety of the United States, both culturally and politically, in the latter decades of the 20th century…[It’s] a beautiful read that narrates an important story and introduces Alia Volz as a writer of extraordinary talent.” —Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Bookstore
2020-01-02
The unheralded story of San Francisco's trailblazing "Brownie Lady" plays out across more than 20 tumultuous years of the city's often tragic history.
Volz's mother, Meridy, and father, Doug, may have been complicated people, attempting to build a family during chaotic times in the Bay Area, but they were especially well suited to create and dispense delicious baked goodies heavily laced with palliative marijuana. By simple virtue of her birth, the author became an "accomplice" in Sticky Fingers Brownies, the family business that at one time was cranking out more than 10,000 brownies per month. The experience of accompanying Meridy on perilous brownie runs throughout the city in the 1970s and '80s, when growing a single marijuana plant was a felony offense in California, made Volz an eyewitness to an unprecedented revolution in American culture that continues to reverberate today. The author combines a journalist's eye for detail with a storyteller's sense of humanity to chronicle all the incredible highs and lows, both public and private. The dissolution of her parents' relationship dovetails with San Francisco's more public trauma, including the Jonestown Massacre, the assassination of Harvey Milk, and the outbreak of AIDS. "Faced with bureaucratic rigidity, people with AIDS broke the law to self-medicate with cannabis," writes Volz. "Dealers became healers." Sticky Fingers may have started off as a goofy piece of psychedelia wrapped up in tight, little squares, but the business soon became indispensable in providing necessary relief for stricken young men who were inexplicably wasting away from a little-understood disease while still only in their 20s and 30s. The author's firsthand depiction of AIDS and its devastating initial impact on San Francisco's residents rings with epic tragedy. Thankfully, there are plenty of triumphs in the Sticky Fingers saga as well, and Volz herself embodies just one of them.
A sometimes-sad yet stirring love letter to San Francisco filled with profundity and pride.
