A disillusioned teenager comes to grips with drugs, sex, his priest cousin's abandoned vocation, and the call to arms of a manipulative would-be revolutionary. A predatory cult leader attempts to exploit the teachings of a group with links to the medieval movement of the Cathars. A cynical talk-radio personality meets his match in an alluring fantasy writer and a young Arab refugee with unique paranormal abilities. What links them is that they are, each in his or her own way, examples of Los Angeles craziness in the period from 1968 to 1972.