Paradise Cove

Paradise Cove: They Escaped the Cuckoo's Nest is a powerful firsthand account of life inside a Southern California residential facility for recovering psychiatric patients-as told by an unlikely observer, George T. Nagel, an 80-year-old graduate student who volunteered there in the 1970s as fieldwork for his master's at California State University, Northridge. With clarity, compassion, and humor, Nagel captures the struggles and triumphs of those navigating the fragile space between institutionalization and independence, while tracing his own quiet path toward healing.

But Nagel harbored an extraordinary secret: he was in fact Rabbi Yechezkel Taub--the Yabloner Rebbe--a Hasidic leader who led his followers from Poland to pre-state Israel before abandoning his faith and disappearing into secular anonymity in Los Angeles.

Rabbi Pini Dunner rediscovered this manuscript, and added context, annotations, and reflections that restore the forgotten legacy of a visionary leader. It's an astonishing story with all the elements of intrigue-a secret identity, an incredible rediscovery, and a bridge between continents, generations, and disparate worlds.