Tania Pryputniewicz had an unusual childhood. Her father accidentally overdosed after unknowingly drinking an LSD-laced cup of punch at a party in San Francisco. Her parents decide to make a clean break with their current life; the family ended up on the prairies of Illinois, in a town called Stelle. They had become part of the Chosen, a commune led by a self-styled messiah called “the Leader” who preached an imminent apocalypse. But the apocalypse never came, and the messiah turned out to be something of a predator.
It was, eventually, a return to California, a hope for some kind of normal life and saving her parents’ marriage. The life became more normal, but the marriage couldn’t be saved.
Half a century later, Pryputniewicz has written The Fool in the Corn: Poems.
