One day in 1973, Ellen Flanagan, an exemplary stay-at-home Berkeley mom who sewed and cooked and cleaned on demand, packed her husband and two daughters off to work and school as usual and got up on a ladder to wash down the wallpaper. Then, sponge in hand, she said to herself, “to hell with it,” climbed down again, and went back to work as a nurse, leaving her bewildered younger daughter Caitlin to while away the after-school hours with a house key tied around her neck.... More >>>