This book is about Cleopatra Sugarman, who grows up poor in rural Connecticut;her mother Japanese and her father a former boxer. Cleo works the fields. Attending private college, she gets exposed to the Grateful Dead tour, Indian music, exclusive fraternities, political movements, famous jazz musicians and drugs. In San Francisco, she falls in love with a hippie. Cleo sees the Hells Angels and spends time in the Haight Ashbury, witnessing the last of the hippie culture in San Francisco.