Welcome to Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment
Welcome! Memoir Madness , a coming-of-age story, chronicles 18-year-old Jennifer Semple’s remarkable counterculture journey, beginning on the colorful streets of 1968 Hollywood and culminating in 1969 with her escape from an Iowa mental institution. More about Memoir Madness : Christmas Eve, 1968 , from lunar orbit, Apollo 8 astronauts deliver their Christmas message, a passage from Genesis. On earth, 18-year-old Jennifer Semple embarks on her own odyssey, happening on the steamy streets of Hollywood, where heads, 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. After Jennifer’s drug-dealing boyfriend abandons her and cops threaten incarceration, her legal guardians convince the girl to return to Iowa, to “get her head on straight.” Instead, Jennifer is involuntarily committed to
