The 1950s as a whole brought peace and prosperity to our great nation. We were fresh out of the war, baby buggies dotted the American dream, shiny new sedans browsed the wide boulevards, and President Eisenhower was signing bills to keep Americans safe. Moreover, the city of San Francisco had become an oasis for easy living, as well as Mecca for many celebrities, including the likes of Natalie Wood, Joe DiMaggio, and even Marline Monroe. It was a city of glitz and glamour, a tinsel town growing by leaps and bounds; however regrettably at the same time, so were Mathew Saltycova’s psychotic episodes.
Many mornings Mathew would awaken in a sweat following yet another night of horrendous dreams, next to his wife Mulysa and within their dated second story flat across from the Golden Gate park panhandle. It was there, after patching himself together from the perpetual torment within his mind, that he would kiss his wife and their newborn child goodbye for yet another long day at his home away from home, the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mathew loved his job as a journalist, but loathed his tyrannical boss. However fortunately as luck, or perhaps fate would have it; after receiving an odd unsolicited letter containing a windfall job offer, an offer too intriguing to pass up, the young couple packed what they could bring and struck out East to their final destination, the small burg of Evarg in Upstate New York.
There within the archaic hamlet, Mathew takes up his new position as Chief Columnist for the Daily Mail Newspaper, and where soon his investigative journalism leads to the fact that the Evarg Institute, (a planned hospital to address the employment needs of the dying community) is slated to be built within the town’s jurisdiction. However unbeknownst to the trusting townspeople, it’s all a misleading cover story hiding some stigmatic facts from the neighboring residents. This leads him to further uncovering that in all actuality, the Institute will be a high security psychiatric ward for the criminally insane; and it is here as well, that Mathew’s profound mental distress begins to unravel.
