Reviewed by Caroline Cummins

Late in the summer of 2001, a couple of hippies who hosted annual pot festivals on their Michigan farm decided to burn it down in protest. By early September, they had been shot and killed in a standoff with the local authorities. Were they renegades who provoked their own deaths? Or were they activists who were simply trying to take a stand?

In “Burning Rainbow Farm,” there’s no question that author Dean Kuipers believes in the hippies. A Los Angeles journalist whose stories have explored the various controversies of the drug war, medical marijuana and hemp activism, Kuipers clearly thinks the drug war is ridiculous, medical marijuana innocuous and hemp a darn fine fiber. With the story of Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm, the blue-collar, brawl-loving, pot-adoring gay kings of Rainbow Farm, Kuipers found the story to bring all his points together. The result is sharp, if occasionally rough around the edges.

“Words blew out of him like out of a Baptist on fire, he was a tall drink of Kentucky water in a suit and tie and a black cowboy hat, a real Southern guerilla (sic) with a lawyer’s lexicon and a mountain drawl tumbling like honeyed sand.” And that’s only one of the (usually male) characters to trip through Kuipers’ mince-no-words manifesto. In Michigan, apparently, marijuana is plenty macho, the source of a libertarian mellow aligned with property rights, gun rights and flag-waving patriotism. Kuipers, who interviewed scores of witnesses, family members and authorities for his book, pulls off a trifecta by showing how one man, the subculture he belonged to, and the wider world of pot activism came together to create the temporary haven and eventual inferno of Rainbow Farm.

Kuipers’ hero is Tom Crosslin, the owner of Rainbow Farm, who believed fervently in his Constitutional right to do whatever he chose on his property, including hosting hempfests. When the authorities interfered by putting his partner’s son in foster care and threatening to confiscate his farm, Crosslin responded by burning it down and barricading himself at home with a veritable arsenal. Did Crosslin take aim at a cop? Or did the cop simply blow Crosslin away? Whatever happened, it’s clear nobody was behaving pacifically. Kuipers makes his strongest argument in favor of hemp, a miraculous fiber that can provide food, oil and textiles. But the anger and guns follow the dope plant, not the rope plant. “Burning Rainbow Farm” is a call to arms that shows just how dangerous those arms can be.