When the Devil Laughed

A young mother sets off to find the ideal community in which to raise her children, traveling across the country, exploring alternative lifestyles, from Santa Fe, to Vermont, to a commune in Tennessee and the the hollows of West Virginia in the early 1970s. When she returns to her hometown, tired and unsure of what is best for her family, she is faced with an ugly custody hearing, which she loses to her ex-husband, the banker. In this memoir, Phyllis falls apart, and struggles for years to overcome her grief, guilt and crushing shame, before she comes back to some authentic sense of herself and a life that she can call her own.