Dr. Monica Starkman is a psychiatrist who is a faculty member of the University of Michigan Medical School Department of Psychiatry in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a clinician and a scientific researcher. Many of her publications in the scientific literature highlight concerns and conditions of women. She has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is a recognized expert on the effects of stress hormones on mood and on brain structure. Dr. Starkman has also published in The New Republic and Voguemagazine.

When a pregnancy following years of infertility ends in premature labor, Margo Kerber’s grieving becomes intertwined with feelings of inadequacy and shame. An imaginary pregnancy shields her from despair until ultrasound images confront her with the truth—at which point Margo sinks into a depression requiring psychiatric hospitalization. There, her harrowing experiences magnify her sense of being abnormal. When an opportunity arises, she flees. But following her escape, a chance encounter with a mother and her briefly unattended baby evokes another fantasy: she can better nurture this infant than can its mother. This new self-deception propels Margo into a gripping, heartbreaking series of increasingly daring and dangerous actions—with profound consequences for herself and others.