In the midst of teenage rebellion, English, the youngest of six, finds her mother dead in the bathroom. Alone with a difficult father, she is sent a one-way ticket from New Jersey to San Francisco, embarking upon a journey that takes her through the earliest days of the counterculture, psychedelics, and free love, on into single parenthood, and eventually a place of fully owning her own strengths and abilities.
In Hippie Chick, a rebellious teenager finds her mother dead in the bathroom. To save her from living alone with a difficult father, her older sister sends her a one-way plane ticket to leave New Jersey. Landing in San Francisco, she is thrust into a lifestyle way beyond what she is ready for, and that challenges all previous notions of how one behaves. It is 1963, and we are brought along as Ilene becomes immersed in the unfolding of the sixties during the earliest days of sexual freedom, psychedelic drugs, the jazz scene, and rock 'n' roll. This is a deeply personal story of how one young woman manages to survive and even to thrive in the face of the whirlwind of experiences coming at her. It is filled with a rich tapestry of moments that run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous, and everything in between.