Christmas
Eve, 1968: history is made as Apollo 8 astronauts deliver their Christmas
message from orbit around the moon.
On earth,
at The Crystal Ship, a rock and head shop near Hollywood, California, Jennifer
Semple listens to the iconic broadcast and, through the fog of drugs, ponders
the future.
In
the ensuing days, the 18-year-old girl experiments with LSD and other drugs;
juggles a crumbling relationship with a notorious drug dealer; and tries to
make sense of life at 2001 Ivar Street, a Hollywood, California, apartment
complex where hippies, drug dealers, freaks, strippers, groupies, college
students, Jesus Freaks, counterculture gurus, drag queens, rock stars and
wannabe rocksters, svengalis, and con artists converge during one of the most
volatile periods in history.
Then
her grandfather finds the girl and coaxes her into returning to her Iowa
hometown, where, unknown to her, she is still considered a minor.
After
a series of events and blowups with her grandparents, she is dragged into the
Iowa court system and involuntarily committed to the Cherokee Mental Institute
in Cherokee, Iowa.
While
incarcerated, she corresponds with Jeff, a new boyfriend, and also interacts
with other patients: Wolfie, a psychopath who preys on other patients; Penny, a
17-year-old unwed mother; Carrie, a teen cutter with strange obsessions about
rats; Joyce, a young married mother enthralled with “10 ways of suicide”; Drew,
a young man facing a stiff prison sentence for possession of marijuana; and
D.J., a 42-year-old mentally challenged man and 25-year resident of Cherokee,
among others.
Finally
released from the institution, Jennifer flees Iowa and settles in Pennsylvania,
where she still lives today.
As
young Jennifer narrates her late 1960’s memoir, how will the older and wiser
Jennifer, now voluntarily returning to Cherokee as a visitor, reconcile that
painful time in her history with her current ordinary life as a wife, mother,
grandmother, and teacher?
