Book excerpt: Orphaned at the age of nine, Mikey Cuddihy left the U.S. to board at an experimental British school. A vivid and intense memoir of coming of age amidst the unraveling social experiment of the late 1960s. When Mikey Cuddihy was orphaned at the age of nine, her life exploded. She and her siblings were sent from New York to board at experimental Summerhill School, in England, and abandoned there. The setting was idyllic, lessons were optional, pupils made the rules. Joan Baez visited and taught Mikey guitar. The late sixties were in full swing, but with total freedom came danger. Mikey navigated this strange world of permissiveness and neglect, forging an identity almost in defiance of it.