So begins the story of Justine Hornbecker. At eighteen, she dreams of being a published illustrator living in Manhattan. But life isn't always what you want it to be or seems to be... After a suicide attempt lands her in a state mental hospital, thanks to her older sister signing the papers and having her committed, she is locked away with others like her, but she knows--she swears--she didn't try and kill herself. She can't make sense of why her sister said she did, but her fresh healing scars prove that, indeed, it is true...right? Something did happen. That something went terribly wrong. It is 1968 and being committed and locked away forever is the norm for people with mental illnesses.

Over the next decade, she will be locked away from the rest of society, and thus, her new life is filled with electroshock treatments, lobotomies, isolation wards, straitjackets...fear, pain, agony, and loss. Yet she finds comfort in new friends and mourns the loss of others who come but do not leave Wicklin State Lunatic Asylum, like people should. Instead, many pass into the morgues and are tossed into mass graves in the hospital's cemetery next door. Keeping her head above water with hope despite the pain of abuse and the cruelty that the nurses and doctors impose upon her and the other patients, she will seek the truth out and answer her own question: was she crazy...or not?