By DEANE LOUIS ROMANO (Avon; 1968)

This paperback relic, hailing from the psychedelic era, offers a fictional extrapolation on the real-life LSD contamination chronicled in THE DAY OF ST. ANTHONY’S FIRE by John G. Fuller. THE TOWN THAT TOOK A TRIP won’t change anyone’s life, but as far as 1960s potboilers go it’s diverting enough.

Drug-themed fiction of the late 1960s can be divided into two categories: that which targeted the counterculture and that which was oriented toward frightening and/or titillating straight America. In this novel author Deane Louis Romano attempts to straddle both camps, alternating William Burroughs-esque slip-steaminess with straightforward storytelling in a succession of first person recountings.

The primary subject is a batch of LSD being cooked up by a pair of hippie drifters. They plan to sell the stuff in LA but are currently settled in a godforsaken desert community ironically named Eden. This place is lorded over by a mean old man named Jeremiah, who harbors unsavory secrets involving his alluring daughter Windy. Other characters include the town preacher, who believes God is dead, and Jeremiah’s rebellious son Skyler, whose troublemaking ways rival those of the drifters.

It’s the latter who sets things in motion during a dispute with the hippies, during which Skyler gets ahold of their acid stash and pours it into the town’s water basin. This occurs the night before an especially sweltering day, meaning the LSD contaminated water is fated to be greedily imbibed by the town’s citizenry, who react accordingly.

The trip of the title is portrayed in a variety of different prose styles. In describing the hallucinations undergone by Skyler the writing is hallucinatory and downright experimental as Skyler lives up to his name, imagining himself sprouting feathers and transforming into a bird, whereas the trip of a stuffy old schoolteacher is detailed in a more rounded and coherent accounting of her thoughts and fantasies, which center on her being impregnated by the sun. The only characters who don’t experience the effects of the LSD are, ironically enough, the two hippies who supplied the stuff.

The ending could be stronger. It posits that following the collective freak-out things actually improve in Eden, with Jeremiah relinquishing his hold on the town in favor of new, less strict leadership. There’s even a suggestion that the acid-laced water, which ends up dumped on the ground, may facilitate the growth of grass in Eden’s parched lands, making this a rare example of an unabashedly pro-LSD narrative.