At one point in their lives, they had served as each other’s liberators, and together they would liberate the consciousness of countless people during the turbulent 1960s. Rosemary Woodruff was familiar with the mystical as she watched her father perform tricks in front of wonderstruck audiences in the Midwest. A supernatural experience Rosemary had in her youth was impactful enough in her mind that she desired to replicate it. However, her fateful meeting with Dr. Timothy Leary was decades away.

"[Cahalan's] excellent research seeks to dispel misconceptions about Rosemary while illuminating Leary’s deceitful nature. This is a first-class biography."

Rosemary’s first attempt at a long-lasting relationship ended after a year, a marriage to a brutish military man whom she erased from most of her life story. She moved to New York, where she found work as a model and later as a flight attendant. The jobs proved relatively unfulfilling, but Rosemary got her fulfillment through books, as her appetite for knowledge was voracious. She found love again as she married a musician, yet his emotional abuse and infidelity quickly spoiled their union. Rosemary’s first experience with a psychedelic substance, Peyote, put her in a more assertive frame of mind in ending a subsequent relationship. Her quest to expand her mind had led her to Millbrook, NY, where something revolutionary was happening.

By the time Rosemary met Leary, he was well known. His research using Psilocybin at Harvard (the Concord Prison Experiment) had garnered him headlines during the early 1960s. However, his advocacy for mind-altering drugs irked those in the Harvard hierarchy, and he was fired. Despite losing his job, he had benefactors willing to fund his work. By the time Rosemary and Leary became an item, he was preaching the benefits of LSD at the Hitchcock Estate in Millbrook.

Rosemary and Leary consummated their relationship shortly after he helped her flee New York and an abusive boyfriend. The couple married in 1967 and was soon spreading the gospel of LSD to the blossoming counterculture in the United States. Their residence at Millbrook was terminated as a result of law enforcement raids, and Leary became a target for police scrutiny wherever he went. As his loyal spouse, Rosemary would share the target. By the early 1970s, they were at a crossroads as each was looking at lengthy jail sentences. Leary cut a deal, which served as the ultimate betrayal to both his wife and the counterculture movement.

THE ACID QUEEN is a revealing and fascinating biography of a woman who was often outshone by her infamous and influential spouse. Rosemary Woodruff was a smart, charming and spiritual person who believed in her husband and his initial mission in expanding the consciousness of the masses. The trials and tribulations she endured as the wife and partner of the notorious Dr. Timothy Leary ranged from jail time and a life on the run to a brief confinement in Algeria under the eye of the Black Panthers. Her story is about a search for identity and how it was discovered after years of adversity.

Susannah Cahalan (BRAIN ON FIRE) has written an extensive and worthwhile book about a misunderstood and often maligned figure. Her excellent research seeks to dispel misconceptions about Rosemary while illuminating Leary’s deceitful nature. This is a first-class biography.