About Memoir Madness: Synopsis
Prologue: Caged, February 19, 1969
The memoir opens with 18-year-old Jennifer
Semple being driven to the Cherokee Mental Health Institute via a caged police
car.
I. Going to
Cherokee (Chapters 1 - 54)
In the Iowa lexicon of Northwest Iowa, “going
to Cherokee” is synonymous with going crazy; at this point, the teen has no
idea that she is well on her way; Stoney, her drug-dealing boyfriend, and she are
just grooving on LSD, a youthful indiscretion foreshadowing what is yet to
come.
On Christmas Eve, 1968, through the haze of
LSD, she realizes that her life is worth more than just getting high. This is
not a linear realization, for during this period, she continues experiencing
upheaval, ecstasy, discovery, backtracking, hurt, and anger.
In Part I, the teen begins a journey toward
coming of age, continuing as she stumbles toward self-discovery and culminates
in a double-generational clash with her guardian grandparents and Woodbury
County, Iowa. An altercation with her grandfather occurs at the Sioux City bus
depot and continues at the police station, thus setting into motion trumped-up
legal paperwork, designed to put the girl, an “incorrigible” teenager, away.
II. Verdict
(Chapters 55 - 56)
This part is divided into three sections:
Section one opens with the grandmother’s
voice as the older woman tries to figure out what has gone wrong with her
grandchild. At the end, she asks, “What has this world come to when you send a
sweet, deeply religious girl to California, and she comes back as a dirty
long-haired hippie, addicted to drugs, with no morals left?” This rhetorical
question, the grandmother’s final passage of the memoir, remains unanswered.
Section two (Special Insert) presents
the teen’s court records, word for word, unedited. Woodbury County, in its
bumbling, inept manner, speaks for itself.
Section three closes with the
grandfather’s lament: “Where have we gone wrong? It’s enough to drive a sane
man crazy.” This, too, is the grandfather’s final passage.
III. Driven
(Chapters 57 - 62)
This thematic part, a pause between Woodbury
County’s decision to commit the teen to Cherokee and her actual commitment,
depicts the myriad ways of being “driven.”
Chapter 57 (February-April 1969)
describes the rest of the police car drive to Cherokee, the teen’s drive to
forget those first hours, and her drive to escape from the institution.
Chapter 58 (February 1969-April
2002): A much older Jennifer has been “driven for 33 years: to keep secret my
commitment.”
Chapter 59 (April 2002): Jennifer
finds old letters, exchanged 33 years ago between Jeff Brown (later her husband,
now her ex) and her, and she feels driven to reread them. At the time she is experiencing
an impasse in her writing and personal life.
She emails Cherokee for her hospital
records, again driven, this time to have some unanswered questions finally
answered.
Chapter 60 (May 15, 2004) depicts a
convergence of two milestones: husband Jerry’s upcoming Fulbright in Skopje, North
Macedonia, and the impending birth of their granddaughter while they are away. “I
don’t want to go overseas,” she says to her husband. “I want to be there for
her birth, to hold her minutes, even seconds, after she’s born.”
After reaching a compromise, in which they would
return to the U.S. in January 2005, she decides to follow her husband overseas,
to use the year abroad as an opportunity to write her memoir.
Chapter 61 closes on August 29, 2004,
with Jennifer’s final decision to revisit Cherokee.
“I’ll drive you there,” says Jerry.
Chapter 62 (August 30, 2004)
continues the literal and symbolic meaning of being driven: Jennifer, now the
visitor to the institution instead of its inmate, says, “This warm summer day,
I am driven to Cherokee, northeast of Sioux City, to revisit the Mental Health
Institute. Metaphorically, this trip has taken 35 years and thousands of
detours and dead ends.”
IV.
Cherokee (Chapters 63 - 85)
“Oh-my-God. I can’t believe they did this to
me,” Jennifer laments on February 19, 1969, as she is admitted to the
institution..
Thus begins the teen’s Cherokee
incarceration, continuing until April 15, 1969, and ending with her conditional
release from the institution. During the two months there, she copes with doctors,
staff, and social workers who would meddle with her future.
Jennifer develops a strong bond with the
psychiatrist assigned to her case; from the beginning, he has realized that her
commitment was an egregious mistake and works toward the teen’s timely release.
She also develops an ongoing clash of wills with a young and straitlaced social
worker, yet, despite her sassy behavior, he also works for her release.
Letters from Jeff, Jennifer’s boyfriend after
Stoney, have become her lifeline to the outside world as they exchange ideas on
books, popular culture, music, movies, and politics. However, he admits to
experiencing mixed feelings about their relationship – there is another girl – so
in these pre-email days, their relationship takes on a snail-mail high drama as
the two teens banter back and forth, from Iowa, to Pennsylvania, and back, via
the United States Postal Service.
Meanwhile, Jennifer interacts with various
patients: a psychopathic predator who preys on other patients; a 17-year-old
unwed mother; a teen cutter with strange obsessions about rats; a young married
mother enthralled with “10 ways of suicide”; and D.J., a 42-year-old mentally
challenged man and 25-year resident of Cherokee, among others.
Of all the patients, D.J. has the most
impact on the teen. A kind man, he shows that freedom is relative, for in his
mind, Cherokee is exactly where he wants to be – that, for him, release would
be a burden. “His day-to-day life is here, always to be the same, following the
seasons, nurturing new plants, mourning the dying and dead,” the girl says, on
the day before her release. “If I were to return 25-35 years from now, I might
find him, an old man, in this same spot, the fir tree a mighty sage.”
V. Leaving
Cherokee (Chapters 86 - 87)
“Hooray! I’m out!” the teen says on April 16,
her release date. She has been released on one condition: that she remain in
Sioux City for at least six months. She has refused to live with her grandparents
or a sympathetic aunt, so the state of Iowa arranges for her room and board at
a local boardinghouse.
The girl finds a job in a diner, the owner a
bitter woman who mistreats her employees. Within 10 days, Jennifer quits that job,
deciding to split for Pennsylvania, long before the required six-month residency
requirement, but, first, she must wait for her tax refund, a result of her
short-lived job in Hollywood.
To the teen’s dismay, Jeff has decided to
visit the other girl, who lives in another Pennsylvania city.
Her sense of urgency increases as she, for
the next two weeks, awaits the refund check.
Finally, on May 1, the refund arrives. On
May 5, after a minor confrontation with her grandfather at the bus depot, Jennifer
leaves for Pennsylvania.
This part concludes on May 6 as she steps
off the bus in York, Jeff awaiting her. “It’s been a long, long journey,” she
narrates, looking forward to this new phase of life.
VI:
Released: August 30, 2004 (Chapter 88)
This part wraps up Jennifer’s 2004 journey
to Cherokee, both actual and metaphorical.
After buying Cherokee Mental Health: 100
Years of Serving Iowan’s [sic], an incomplete history of the institution, Jennifer
and Jerry leave Cherokee and head back to Sioux City. During their return trip,
she flips through the book and scans the Chronicle Times, the town’s
newspaper: the ordinariness of the stories strikes her as profound.
“No section called ‘Cedar Loop News’ [institution
address] for the institution,” Jennifer observes as they cruise into Sioux City.
“On this day, as it was for me in 1969, these are two distinct towns, one wide
open and transparent, the other shadowy and secret – just a no-name outline on
the map.”
VII. Final
Diagnosis: May 9, 1969
In a short clinical passage, Jennifer’s psychiatrist
offers the final diagnosis for her: “Adjustment Reaction of Adolescence.”
Epilogue: A
Final Update (December 2012)
Jennifer offers a short update on her life
since August 2004 and a short, albeit incomplete, history of the institution,
culled from the Cherokee Mental Health: 100 Years of Serving Iowan’s [sic]
where she discovers some surprising details about the institution’s history and
how it might relate to her story.
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