Gem Stoned

Born shortly after the Second World War, Mathew Cole and his friends grew up believing in the land of opportunity. But it wasn't long before the illusion of a free America, "the greatest country on earth," seemed to crumble right before their eyes. That optimism died alongside JFK and Dr. King and vanished during the Vietnam War, prompting a far-out new movement that flew in the face of everything the old white guys in power held dear.

It was the era of the counterculture, a time of reckless experimentation and boundless freedom-when the number one rule was that the rules were made to be broken. The under-thirty crowd was California-bound, filled to the brim with music and radical new ideas that made the 1970s one of the most memorable eras in American history.

But not everyone who took part in this cultural revolution survived unscathed. Many lives were lost to drugs-many more to unusual "accidents," as was the case with Mathew's friend and travel companion Marcel Yeats. Now it's up to Mathew and a group of close confidants to make sense of Marcel's mysterious death while navigating the wild and wacky antics of the '70s counterculture lifestyle.