Bleaks: A Memoir

The Bleaks is the true story of a harrowing nightmare into which writer Paul Illidge’s life is plunged one summer night, when a police drug-squad raids his suburban house, arrests him and his two teenage sons, and whisks them off to jail for growing some marijuana plants in their basement. Helpless against police harassment and abuse, tangled in a judicial system where the presumption of innocence is thrown out the window, Illidge is not only forbidden contact with his children, but forced by his estranged wife to sell their house before the government seizes it as an organized crime grow-op.