How does a young 14-year-old from a conservative family in Minnesota end up in the Charles Manson family? This is what Dianne Lake tries to answer in her autobiography Member Of The Family. Dianne Lake was the youngest girl in the Manson family. The book is a very unique version as the true story is told from Dianne's point of view. You can see Charles Manson and the rest of the members through the eyes of a young girl. Member Of The Family is a tragic story about family, not only about the demented version of the Manson family, but also about the downward spiral of Dianne Lake's biological family that ultimately leads Dianne to meet and follow Charles Manson. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay When you first look at Dianne's upbringing you can see cracks in her family. On the surface they seemed like a normal family. They went to church and seemed to have everything under control. Yet, there was a restlessness stirring in Diane's father. Dianne remembers that after her father served in the Korean War, he was never the same and was always restless. He was a good artist and always dreamed of making a living from his art. Eventually, he was able to sell his art and gained some attention in Minnesota. Yet even after some success, Dianne's father was still restless. His restlessness led him to meet another woman and for this other he left his wife and family. Eventually, he returned to his wife and children. After returning, Dianne's father began experimenting with marijuana and LSD. He began reading Timothy Leary's books and began following the philosophy of the hippie movement. Dianne says several times in the book that one of the reasons her mother was so in love with her father was because he was a free thinker. She practically worshiped him for his intelligence. He thought he could do no wrong. Soon, Dianne's mother began smoking weed and taking LSD alongside her husband. Dianne remembers smoking her first joint with her father when she was eleven or twelve years old. You can see a lot of dysfunction going on in this conservative Minnesota family. Eventually, after several years of drug use, Dianne's father made the decision for the family to move to California. Not long after moving there, his father made another decision for the family to tune in and drop out. This was another way of saying that the family would abandon society and live in a hippie commune. This was the era of free love and since Dianne was only fourteen, many hippies living on the commune didn't know what to do with Dianne. They didn't want her to end up having sex, so the commune leaders kicked her out. One of the saddest moments in the book is when Dianne is forced to leave, but her parents don't leave with her. Her parents simply write a note on paper saying that they are Dianne's parents and Dianne has their permission to go wherever she wants. You can imagine being fourteen and alone. His parents accepted the hippie philosophy that parents shouldn't tell their children what to do. So they told Dianne, when she was fourteen, to do what she wanted and live where she wanted. You can see where this downward spiral of Dianne's family will ultimately take her. When Dianne first met Charles Manson, she described him as a short guy who looked like some kind of spiritual guru. He says he seemed to look into his soul and somehow knew.