Mavis And the Painted Ladies

After escaping from a seemingly hopeless environment of poverty and religious fanaticism in Southern California, Mavis Ash finds herself in a Victorian mansion on Nob Hill in San Francisco. There, she is enmeshed in a sinister society known as the Serpentine Order and comes under the influence of its grand master, the evil Merl Lynn. Drugged and deceived, she is coerced into murdering Alexander Thorpe, an aspiring gubernatorial candidate. Judged insane and incarcerated in a mental hospital, she ultimately gains her freedom and returns to the place of her betrayal to defeat the evil powers that control the Serpentine Order and to set her feet on a path of truth and goodness.