In 1953, during in the small New England town of Iceville, Walter Ashton, inventor of the transorbital lobotomy, is pitching the benefits of his invention at a fair celebrating Mental Health Week.

Anna, a young woman wanting to escape her family meets Billy, a local tough guy, when he and his henchmen, Mo and Joe, are finishing beating up someone who didn't pay on time. Billy tells Anna she didn't see what she just saw and invites Anna out. She is charmed and retraumatized at the same time. Her brother Bobby returns from the Korean War and soon is hospitalized when he is attacked after preaching that the only way to get rid of communism is to get rid of God. He soon wanders off from the hospital and is hit by a train.

At home with Billy who is hitting a golf ball into a dixie cup, Anna watches Billy club to death a man who tries to escape from their basement, after which she decides to go to the local cinema and see for a second time THE SNAKE PIT, starring Olivia de Havilland. On her way home, listening to a radioplay about mental health, she runs out of gas and is given a ride by the Black taxi driver, Dan, whom she knows. She tells Dan she has decided to get a lobotomy and suggests lobotomy might help "the Negro people," a suggestion which Dan politely dismisses. She returns home to Billy and announces her determination to get a lobotomy. Billy is at first taken aback but she insists. He consents and promises he'll help her get the very first lobotomy available.

While doing research for my dissertation which would become the research for A Hole In One, I met a person who told me that his mother had pursued getting a lobotomy for a long time until eventually she succeeded. Having always assumed that all people who were lobotomized were forced to undergo this treatment, I was stunned to hear about someone whose conscious desire led them to pursue this mode of treatment. Through further research I learned that there existed a small but significant number of people who had not been lobotomized against their will but who had actively sought out a lobotomy, often successfully. I was struck by the existence of such a group because it appeared to... Read More