Memoir Madness

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, 18-year-old Jennifer Semple listens to the iconic broadcast and, through the fog of drugs, ponders the future. In the ensuing days, the 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, flophouse-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. Jennifer's grandfather (and guardian) coaxes her into returning to Sioux City, her hometown: "To get your head on straight," he says. After a series of blowups with her grandparents, she, still considered a minor by Iowa law, is dragged into the Iowa court system and involuntarily committed to the Cherokee Mental Health Institute in Cherokee, Iowa. While incarcerated, she corresponds with Jeff, a new boyfriend in Pennsylvania, and 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; 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. Eventually 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 memoirist, 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, writer, and teacher?