Got this cuz it sounded like psychedelic Harley Quinn (and I’ve tripped dozens of times) since there’s a decades’ long back and forth w/ each other and illegal substances. In some ways, it’s crazier than fantasy w/ the Weather Underground helping Rosemary break out charismatic psych professor Tim Leary and run off to Algeria under the sketchy protections of the Black Panthers and their rapist leader, but, taking a step back…

I barely knew these people beyond the names but the writing is so lush, it fills you in full-fledged and name-drops so many celebrities across what I thought was a bigger swath of time than they’d be associated. So Rosemary and Tim are both on their second crumbling marriages when they meet though Tim stays in his when he’s w/ Rosemary for a looong time. Obviously, the author is bias towards Rosemary (easy when Tim is such a backstabbing fame-whore) though we do always have seedlings how Rosemary also loves to cheat/exaggerate/assume/lie pathologically to make things more poetic for her life. The amount of times Rosemary is called beautiful, you would think she was the baby of Marilyn Monroe and Fabio.

She hops from a woman-beater to druggie eccentrics, starting her journey into psychedelics kind of small and solo with mescaline therapy. She’s always described as fashionable and wannabe high society so she meets Tim at museums and book parties (she’s a super voracious reader despite never going to college). She knows Tim’s a philanderer and his first wife killed herself yet she pushes that aside, wrapped up in his catchy lines and jokes and confidence. Later on it seems she’ll often overlook Tim’s (and Alan Ginsberg’s) weird relationship w/ kids (his own young ones he does acid and DMT with and come out hating him) and whatever other half-naked runaways are at their Milbrook commune that’s always raided by police.

Always on thin ice for their speeches and play tours encouraging young folk to make LSD a way of life, the couple’s big event is when they’re arrested for weed seeds at the Mexican border. Wanting to teach the couple a lesson, the authorities throw the book at them with sentencing up to thirty years. This ushers in much support for Tim with letters from Eve Babitz and jazz musicians aplenty.

Though they’re always under the threat of prison time, they always seem to evade or shrug it off. Rosemary just wanders out of court halfway through her trial to visit Tim! While she was in jail before that, she was a maid (I didn’t know that was a thing, how Andy Griffith-like) and he goes on Rolling Stone interviews to not mention her and say the famous phrase “tune in, drop out”while ironically he cares so much about collegiate status like an elitist according to Rosemary.

I wasn’t aware they tried to
make their movement so religious, though maybe that was just for tax and image purposes, when it always had sexual overtones like a cult. A way for the dorky men to get girls and “pass them around.” To play communist and expect women and girls to cook and clean and lay for them. Atop that, there’s often big rumors of Tim wanting to reconcile with his wife pre and post divorce all while with Rosemary.

Her revenge or supposed practice of free love to throw back in his face? She sleeps with Tim’s best friend Ralph until Tim’s son catches them. And though they both get jealous, they do wind up marrying after a raid—perhaps just to shut Rosemary up at testimony or in general? She also goes on to love John, a college student while still advocating for Tim when he is sent to prison. She raises $150k+ from the Beetles and such for their legal fund since they’re always relying (think celeb facade rich) on the hospitality and gifts from others. Despite her dedication to his cause, he complains they got caught again cuz they stayed in Geneva to try for child. Something he’s always been wishy washy on and he’s the type to throw everybody under the bus. Meanwhile he can never lay low or quiet, always wanting to be life of the party and not hide his name or fame.

Eventually, she breaks up with him, hoping he’ll change her mind. She comes back in two weeks and he’s already got a girl living with him dressed, made up and perfumed like her amid his endless string.
One of his girls even offers money on Rosemary’s whereabouts as revenge. Tim works with the FBI, urging her to come out of hiding. He’s a huge slimy rat to everyone who helped him escape prison. Ram Das and Ginsberg call him out as turncoat.

Rosemary stayed on the lam, working small jobs under a new name. When Tim has cancer, they reconnect after 15 years though she’s more serious when he remained a silly showman. Everybody’s weirdly in favor of their reunion—perhaps just because of her money situation or the hippie dippy poetry of it all? They stay more like friends and focused on the cause still, though she seemed to hide her emotions on it even in her diary excerpts.

(By the last quarter of the book, they’re both dead and there’s a gigantic bibliography so don’t let the page count make you adverse to picking this up.)

While most people of a certain age have heard of Timothy Leary, fewer people know or remember Rosemary Woodruff Leary, one of his wives and muses. This biography tells her story from her childhood until death, but focusing mostly on her relationship with Leary and how its trajectory informed her later life. More importantly, it tells the important story of how crucial she actually was to his fame and life. Meticulously researched and written, this is a seminal book on the history of the era, although I found it difficult to not view it from a twenty-first century perspective (all that smoking is going to kill you!). But I cannot underscore the importance of telling the story of Rosemary Woodruff, with the underlying reminder that most great/famous/important men in history have had an unseen or underappreciated woman in the background enabling them. And Rosemary Woodruff certainly falls into that category. She was known for her beauty, less so for her important contributions to Leary's work. #TheAcidQueen #NetGalley

I only knew of Timothy Leary peripherally [from different books I have read about that era], and had never [that I remember] even heard of Rosemary before this book, so I really went into this blind.

Overall, this was just an okay read for me [I love the author and in all honesty, took it when it was offered simply because of that]. Clearly, it is very well researched and the writing was also excellent; the problem is, even good writing cannot mask meh if the person being written about is not enjoyable to read about [this was the case for me. It is absoutely not because of the writing. I just did not care about Rosemary after awhile and thought her choices were...questionable]. I cannot deny that Rosemary did some amazing things, but overall, I really struggled to see why she made the choices she did [her whole personal was wrapped around one man, even after he completely betrays her] and...I don't know, I just found that I didn't really like her.

What I did like was some of the history of that time frame; it was interesting to read about all the people that were actually involved in this culture [the stories of Timothy's children was some of the saddest parts of this book; what a crime that really was] and how it ultimately affected everyone, good and bad.

While I am not sorry that I read/listened [the author narrates and she does a really excellent job here] to this, I will admit I was glad when it was finally over.

I was invited to read/review this by the publisher [PENGUIN GROUP Viking Penguin/Viking] and I thank them, Susannah Cahalan, and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An intriguing look at Timothy Leary's third wife Rosemary- the one who stood behind and beside him during the most tumultuous years. Calahan makes no excuses for Rosemary's choices or actions but struggles to bring her to life (not Calahan's fault but rather Rosemary''s nature). It's a portrait of the period as much as it is as biography especially for those who either don't remember or know little about it. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. A good read.

They say behind every great man is a great woman, and Rosemary Woodruff Leary's story is no different. While Timothy Leary may not be held in high esteem by many of the institutions that he sought to belong to and then turn around and rebel against, Rosemary was there by his side throughout some of his biggest moments in the 1960s, and not only as a companion, but as a person with a vital role in Leary's image and future legacy.

It is important to tell the stories of these women, even if they don't stand up to the modern image of independence and feminism, even if they seem to retreat into perfect 1950s housewives when the man's ego is bruised. Rosemary and the other woman of these counterculture movements were irreplaceable in what they did, even if some of the men thought that they were. Rosemary's story is unlike any other, and I am glad that it has been able to be told in this way.