"You likely heard about the murders. This book is what happened before and after them along California's beaches and bluffs, San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the redwoods, Topanga Canyon, Beverly Hills, the Santa Susana Mountains, and the outback of the Mojave Desert. It's about the Charles Manson I perceived, and a gathering of people preparing to survive either a revolution, or the static institutions that were systematically trading all of our vital necessities for money." -- Lynette Fromme, 2018