It is December 1949 as the California Senate convenes for a Special Session. On the table is a proposal for a new maximum security hospital intended to institutionalize sexual psychopaths. Five years later, Atascadero State Hospital opens amid much confusion between pedophilia and homosexuality. As one gay patient after another is committed in an attempt to reform them, Atascadero State Hospital is named “The Gay Dachau” in the San Francisco press. An LAPD detective and his crew bait individual gays, mostly in the Hollywood Hills, round them up and send them to the hospital, where among others, Dr.Peter Soligos, self-professed homosexual hater, treats them with aversive methods. But when psychiatrist Dr. Paul Lindner visits the hospital in search of a missing gay man, he discovers the horrifying conditions inside Atascadero State Hospital. In this compelling novel, a courageous whistleblower forever changes the destinies of innocent California homosexuals and the future of the hospital.
