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Named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best 100 Indie Books of 2023 “Intricate and affecting, Kasdan’s debut finds hope in the saddest of stories.” —Kirkus Reviews STARRED REVIEW What happens to sibling relationships when your older sister, the budding poet you loved and admired as a child, falls prey to severe mental illness? When Deborah Kasdan’s sister returns from a gap year in Israel, she dazzles friends and family with her sophistication and beauty. In three years, however, Rachel is committed to a psychiatric hospital. The diagnosis: schizophrenia. As the years pass, Deborah focuses on her own family and career but constantly feels shadowed by a sense of guilt, especially when a plan to help Rachel backfires and leaves her hospitalized 2,000 miles from home. Eventually a poem Rachel writes gains her admission, against all odds, to a highly regarded community mental health program. After decades, she finally gains the freedom she has long yearned for. Relating her older sister’s struggle, Kasdan excavates its connections to family history and provides a poignant look at a mid-century Jewish family, especially during WWII and the Cold War. As she relates this history to her sister’s life, she realizes how writing consoles both Rachel and her, and how it also connects them. Ultimately, Roll Back the World is a profound testament to the power of writing to heal. Author: Deborah Kasdan Pub Date: October 17, 2023 -
What sort of mad longing besets a woman—nearing fifty and recently widowed—to sell everything she owns, buy an around-the-world airline ticket, pack a single suitcase, and set off alone on a year-long journey without a plan or agenda? When Your Heart Says Go answers that question. Set in 1990–’91, Judy’s story takes readers from San Diego through eleven European countries, the then-Soviet Union, and finally India, during the lead-up to the first Gulf War. Explorations of foreign locales and interactions with strangers and acquaintances who become a lifeline to friendship are interspersed with occasional flashbacks to Judy’s life with her beloved husband, Tom, as well as his illness and death. Descriptions of sites historic and current serve as both daily life and background for Judy’s struggle to find her way as a sober, single, independent woman in the vast world as it edges toward the collapse of the Soviet Union and war in the Middle East. The outer journey serves as a container for the inner; the more Judy experiences of the world, the more she learns about herself—and the closer she gets to realizing her lifelong dream of being a writer. Author: Judy Reeves Pub Date: October 10, 2023 -
In Pursuit of Radio Mom brings the reader tight to Terry Crylen’s side as it traces her path from frequent and debilitating anxiety, loneliness, and shame—and a dysfunctional marriage that mirrors the dynamics of her relationship with her mother—to the discovery of her authentic self and the happiness and fulfillment such a transformation brings. Radio Mom also illuminates the ways in which one generation impacts the next—both wittingly and unwittingly—when later, while pressing along the difficult route of raising her own daughter, the author is challenged to confront, yet again, the legacy of her past. A book that also makes transparent the process of psychotherapy, In Pursuit of Radio Mom’s message is this: the excavation of pain clears space within the mind and heart—affording the growth of new insight, overturning fear, and making acceptance and forgiveness possible. Author: Terry Crylen Pub Date: October 24, 2023 -
Scholar Susan Godwin is hooked when she comes across the captivating story of Mary of Modena—a seventeenth-century Italian princess who was only fourteen when coerced into marriage with the future king of England, James II, yet went on to cultivate a court full of women writers in an age when female authorship was rare. How did Mary achieve such a feat? Rain Dodging is Susan’s creative nonfiction account of the years-long search upon which this question—and her own unquenchable curiosity—launched her. Godwin travels through both space and time, solo adventuring through Britain in pursuit of truth and, in a spicy parallel arc, chronicling her own cluttered but resilient feminist path. From schizophrenic lovers to out-there musicians to one unhinged mother, Susan tells the story of her personal enlightenment even as she visits the palaces and manor houses in England and Scotland Mary once inhabited and pores over materials in Oxford’s stunning 400-year-old Bodleian Library, finding moments of transcendence and unexpected delight along the way. Join Susan in this irreverent and illuminating journey—a fascinating account of the late Stuart monarchy, the progression of feminist history, and the unexpected connection between the two. Author: Susan J. Godwin Pub Date: October 17, 2023 -
At twenty-two, Jennifer Cramer-Miller was thrilled with her new job, charming boyfriend, and Seattle apartment. Then she received a devastating autoimmune diagnosis—and suddenly, rather than planning for a bright future, she found herself soaking a hospital pillow with tears and grappling with words like “progressive” and “incurable.” That day, Cramer-Miller unwillingly crossed over from wellness to chronic illness—from thriving to kidney failure. Her chances of survival hinged upon the expertise of doctors, the generosity of strangers, and the benevolence of loved ones. But what kind of life would that be? Spanning two-plus decades, this family love story explores loss and acceptance, moving forward with uncertainty, and forging a path to joy. Four kidney transplants later, Cramer-Miller is here to shine a bright light on people helping people in difficult times with a story that will make you want to hug the humans you love. Because sometimes it’s the sorrows that threaten to pull us apart that ultimately unite us in hope. Author: Jennifer Cramer-Miller Pub Date: August 15, 2023 -
In 2018, Kathy Elkind and her husband decided to take a grown-up “gap year” in Europe and walk the 1,400-mile Grande Randonnée Cinq (GR5) across The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. At fifty-seven, Kathy has chosen comfort over hardship: Unlike the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Coast Trail, the GR5 winds from village to village instead of campsite to campsite. She and Jim get to indulge in warm beds and delicious regional food every night and croissants in the mornings. The GR5 is not all comfort. Walking day after day for ninety-eight days bring sickness, accommodation struggles, language barriers, and storm-shrouded mountains in the Alps. Meanwhile, Kathy finds herself reflecting on difficult topics—primarily, her struggles with dyslexia, overeating, and shame. But she also finds that the walking becomes a moving meditation and the beauty of the landscape heals; she begins to discover her own wise strength; and as the days unfold, she comes to the gratifying realization that a long marriage is like a long trail: there are ups and downs and it takes hard work to keep going, but the beauty along the way is staggering. Written with raw honesty and compassion, and rich with dazzling scenery, To Walk It Is To See It will inspire you to lace up your walking shoes and discover your own path. Author: Kathy Elkind Pub Date: August 15, 2023 -
Transister is the story of a family in transition. Not a prescriptive narrative but an affirming one. A raw, honest, sometimes humorous account of author Kate Brookes’s journey as her young child grapples with gender identity and becomes her authentic self. Brookes has longed to become a mother for as long as she can remember. And for almost as long, she has harbored a fierce determination to parent her children differently—better—than her own mentally ill mom parented her. To create the “normal” family she’s always wished for. And when she gives birth to twins after two years of fertility struggles, she is, admittedly, hugely relieved that she’s found herself with two boys. There will be no need for her, a decidedly un-girly girl, to braid hair, buy Barbie dolls, or pick out party dresses for her kids. Boys. Easy. Right? But by the time her twins are eight, Brookes has had two realizations: 1) her obstetrician’s “it’s another boy” announcement was flat-out wrong, and 2) there is no such thing as a “normal” family—and that’s a beautiful thing. Author: Kate Brookes Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
Melissa Giberson is a middle-aged suburban wife and mother of two kids, solidly planted in the life she’s always wanted. Yet she longs for something more—something she can’t quite put her finger on until, one day at the Y, she finds herself mesmerized by the sight of a naked woman and asks herself for the first time: Am I gay? This revelation sends Melissa on a head-spinning journey of self-discovery, one that challenges everything she thinks she knows about herself, forces her to decide exactly how much she’s willing to risk for authenticity, and shakes the foundations of the family she’s fiercely determined to shield from the kinds of wounds she sustained during her own childhood. Torn between her desire to be true to herself and her desire to protect her children, she is consumed by fear and conflicting emotions—and when her husband unexpectedly serves her divorce papers, her confusion only deepens. Adrift in uncharted waters, Melissa finds fragments of understanding and peace in unexpected places—in a conference room in Israel, a small fishing village in Cape Cod, and at a yoga retreat center—that help her deconstruct her preconceptions about faith and identity and begin to construct a new framework for her life. Over the course of her ten-year journey, she finds hope, love, and more courage than she ever knew she was capable of, and she gradually assembles the puzzle that is her—the real her. Author: Melissa Giberson Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
Have you ever driven home from work wearing nothing but a pair of rubber boots? For Dr. Melinda McCall, a large animal veterinarian in rural Virginia, this is living the dream. Caring for cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, llamas, and the occasional alpaca, unusual mishaps and mind-blowing adventures abound. Getting caught driving home naked after a tough day at work is just another day at the office for Dr. Melinda. Ride along in the vet truck as this fearless vet confronts every obstacle that crosses her path while building a thriving veterinary practice with an all-female foundation. She prevails through a fractured skull, back surgery, rare zoonotic diseases, and other extreme challenges. With stubbornness and grit, she surpasses the expectations of adversaries, including her own father, to become the owner of a successful veterinary business and mother of an inquisitive, spirited young daughter. Offering a firsthand glimpse into the fascinating world of veterinary medicine, Driving Home Naked is a smart, riveting, and heartfelt memoir that will captivate animal lovers and inspire people to follow their dreams on any scale. Buckle up for a wild ride. Author: Melinda G. McCall, DVM Pub Date: August 8, 2023 -
On his deathbed, Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father poses two unsettling questions: “Are you tough enough? Do they know who you are?” Joanne soon realizes that these haunting questions relate to a center-city Berlin building at 16 Wallstrasse that the Nazis ripped away from her family in 1938. But a decade is to pass before she will fully come to grasp why her father threw down the gauntlet as he did. Repeatedly, Joanne’s restitution quest brings her into confrontation with yet another of her profound fears surrounding Germany and the Holocaust. Having to call on reserves of strength she’s unsure she possesses, the author leans into her professional command of psychiatry, often overcoming flabbergasting obstacles perniciously dumped in her path. The depth and lucidity of psychological insight threaded throughout Summons to Berlin makes it an attention-grabbing standout among books on like topics. As a reader, you’ll come away delighted to know just who Dr. Joanne Intrator is. You’ll also finish the book cheering for her, because in the end, she proves far more than tough enough to satisfy her father’s unnerving final demands. Author: Joanne Intrator Pub Day: August 1, 2023 -
When Dayna MacCulloch was two years old, her father killed his friend and then himself. Twenty years later, she went back to see where it happened—where her father morphed from the hippie, homesteading, jack-of-all-trades man that everyone loved to the guy who took his rifle off the shelf one night and shot his friend in the face. Standing in the place where he did it, a wildfire of unanswered questions—the ones she’d suppressed all her life—blazed open within her. The life she was living no longer made sense, no longer was enough. While most of her friends were applying for big jobs, getting married, and getting pregnant, she bought a one-way ticket to a Greek island—determined to, as Rilke advised, live the questions for as long as she could. You Do Not Have to Be Good is the story of where that choice led her: to five different countries over the course of five years. It is a candid, intimate memoir about the ways that loss and landscape guide and shape us, the ways strangers can heal us, and what it means to finally come home. Author: Dayna MacCulloch Pub Day: August 1, 2023 -
January 2021, ten months into the global pandemic, Sherry Sidoti’s mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer—so Sherry prioritizes a trip to Manhattan over long-awaited empty-nesting and her “second chance” with fiancé Jevon. With new life blooming and loss looming, she is beckoned to answer the question that has haunted her since childhood: is freedom found in “letting go,” as the spiritual teachers (and her mother) insist—or is it found by digging our heels deeper into the earth and holding on to our humanness? A Smoke and a Song is Sherry’s story of her quest to make meaning from the memories homed in her body. Told with tenacity, tenderness, and wry humor, Sherry stumbles towards self-actualization, spiritual awakening—and, despite it all, love. This is a story steeped in art and spirituality that explores the complexities of transgenerational maternal bonds, attachment, loss, and leaning in to our wounds to find the wisdom. Author: Sherry Sidoti Pub Date: August 1, 2023 -
Terry Repak and her partner moved to West Africa with two small children at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1990s. He did AIDS work while she wrote and raised their children to become global citizens like their parents. Living in different countries̵–from Ivory Coast and Tanzania to Switzerland—Terry embraced every opportunity to meet people of other cultures and to bear witness to the ravages of AIDS. Like many expats, she was torn between the pull of home when a parent’s health declined or her siblings needed help and the draw of epic landscapes and foreign cultures. The lessons she learned while living overseas—though not always easy—were deeply transformative. Candid, thoughtful, and instructive, Circling Home explores the notion of home and of how the bonds we form with people from other countries and cultures can profoundly change us. Author: Terry A. Repak Pub Date: September 12, 2023 -
As a young doctor working in the middle of the HIV epidemic in the early ’90s, Alicia Blando feels unsure of the effectiveness of the medical profession. To gain insight into her life’s path, she seeks advice in some unconventional places, and lands on astrology as her way forward. Astrology, based in astronomy, has specific rules; it can’t be easily manipulated. The scientist in her can’t help but respond to this idea. At a pivotal group demonstration, Alicia finds a mentor, Iris, who introduces her to the study of astrology. By learning to read the horoscope, Alicia gains insight into her potential and manifests her ambition to travel and explore healing techniques from indigenous cultures. Eventually, her search for new teachers and past knowledge takes her from Manhattan to the Peruvian Amazon, Belize, and Bolivia, where she discovers ancient ways of healing among people who consider the sky to be a continuation of nature on earth. She connects with the tenets of astrology as the language that describes man’s connection to the sky environment. The horoscopic map gives information that can assist in making better choices in life, Alicia learns; it has the potential to analyze a person’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and health concerns. Alicia’s journey off the beaten path ultimately leads her to true self-exploration and connection with the world around her, as well as a desire to share her knowledge. In Open for Interpretation, she shares her story of finally finding the map she’s been seeking—and explains how we can all use that map to access our true selves and untapped potential. Pub Date: June 27, 2023 Author: Alicia Blando, MD -
Should Rica invite her mother to her wedding? In her early early forties and about to remarry, Rica Ramos realizes that starting over could mean leaving her mother behind. She longs to heal the relationship, but her mother still refuses to acknowledge the sexual abuse Rica suffered at the hands of her stepfather, or her own culpability throughout the years. With old traumas resurfacing and a new life unfolding before her, Rica grasps the power of unspoken grief—and the potential to suffer or heal. Will she and her mother ever cross the chasm between them, or are some secrets meant to stay buried? As Rica navigates her options, she faces two ultimate choices: submit to a culture that shames daughters for not honoring their mothers, or muster the courage to go her own way. Offering a bold and lucid look at mother-daughter relationships, Nobody's Daughter underscores every woman’s right to truth and validation. Pub Date: May 9, 2023 Author: Rica Ramos -
At fifty-four, Alenka was running out of time to follow through on a dream she’d written down in her pocket-size Rumi book just after her first marriage crumbled. Years later, as she slowly rebuilt her life with her second husband, things started spiraling out of control. The only way she knew how to heal and connect all painful parts of her life was by riding her bike, and she didn’t want to have regrets. But was she brave enough to embark on an unknown path and risk losing everything . . . perhaps even her own life? Determined to awaken her dying spirit and heal her battered body, Alenka loaded her mountain bike with 50 pounds’ worth of camping gear and set off on a 2,500-mile journey. Starting in Lake Tahoe California, she hoped to ride along the Sierra Nevada Mountain range to the tip of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, following remote mountain trails. Alone. What followed was an irrevocably transformational journey of love, hope, courage, and resilience—and here, Alenka tells that story in a voice stripped of self-pity and infused with a good dose of humor. She Rides is a galvanizing wake-up call for anyone who wants to unearth and follow their own deeply buried dreams—and reclaim their life. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Alenka Vrecek -
When Barbara Terao moves into a new home in Washington, two thousand miles from her husband in Illinois, she doesn’t know when—or if—she’ll ever live with him again. Her diagnosis of breast cancer three months later changes both of them in ways they never imagined. In the ensuing months, Barbara’s husband and adult children show up to help her through a year of difficult treatments and surgery, and Barbara, in her Whidbey Island cottage, learns to listen to her heart and intuition. Nurtured by Douglas fir forests, the Salish Sea, and her community, she changes her life from the inside out. Her journey, she realizes, wasn’t about leaving her husband so much as finding herself. Reconfigured in body, mind, and spirit, Barbara finally has words for what she wants to say—and the strength to be a survivor. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Barbara Wolf Terao -
On a blustery Maine day, thirty-nine-year-old Roberta Kuriloff found herself standing on a plot of land purchased with her former partner, holding a couple of wood stakes to mark off exactly where her new house would sit. No longer their land. No longer their dream. Now, just hers. Immersed in a world of blueprints, materials, contractors, and critters, Roberta confronted the major losses she’d suffered in her life—in particular the deaths of her mother and aunt from cancer and her separation from her father and brother during her placement in an orphanage—and to try to understand how those losses had shaped the woman, lawyer, and activist she’d become. As she cleared land, hammered nails, lifted beams, and shivered in her rented mobile home, the answers began to come to her. Roberta soon found love again, with a woman named Nancy . . . only to lose her abruptly just one year later in a car accident. Her grief over Nancy’s death, and the psychic and out-of-body events she experienced following that loss, led to an eight-year spiritual quest where she explored her Jewish roots, the Kabbalah, Buddhism, and reincarnation. As she healed, new love beckoned with Bernice—and at long last Roberta found that intrinsic sense of self, that unshakable foundation of heart and soul, that home, that she’d been searching for all along. Pub Date: July 18, 2023 Author: Roberta S. Kuriloff -
Why are so many teachers leaving the profession? They’re burned out; they feel disrespected, and unsupported. After teaching remotely during a pandemic, they’re returning to classrooms with under-socialized and sometimes out-of-control kids. What to do? Teaching by Heart chronicles the journey of a journalist-turned-teacher determined to make teaching work—despite its difficulties. Peek into Madame Nelson’s classroom to see her trying to reach teens who dance, cry, and hit each other in French class; administrators who laud the latest pedagogical trends and testing regime; and parents who sometimes support—and sometimes interfere with—their children’s education. Meet colleagues who save her from quitting, and her children who provide advice. Along the journey, she evolves from an aloof elitist into an empathetic listener to all sorts of teens. Isn’t it time we create schools in which teachers want to stay and new ones enter? Without committed teachers, how can we prepare students to run our world? Teaching by Heart illuminates why it’s so hard to hold on to classroom teachers these days—and what can be done to better the situation. Pub Date: October 31, 2023 Author: Jennifer Nelson -
For twenty-five years, paramedic and firefighter Christy Warren put each tragic, traumatizing call she responded to in a box and closed the lid. One day, however, the box got too full and the lid blew open—and she found herself unable to close it again. Her brain locked her inside a movie theater in which film after film of gut-wrenching scenes from her career played over and over again; she found herself incapable of forgiving herself for what happened at one call in particular. Caught in a loop of shame, anger, irritability, and hypervigilance—classic signs of PTSD—she began to spiral, even to the point of considering suicide, and yet still she was reluctant to seek help. In the end, it took almost losing her marriage to force Christy into action—but once she began to reach out, she found a whole army of folks waiting and ready to help her. The team of people supporting her eventually grew to include an EMDR therapist, a psychiatrist, her peers at a trauma retreat, and a lawyer who made the case for medical retirement and workers compensation. Along the way, Christy learned the vital truths that made it possible to keep going even in her darkest moments—that post-traumatic stress was literally a brain injury; that suicide and alcohol were not the only ways out; that asking for help was a sign of strength, not weakness; and that although it was ultimately up to her to do the work to change the dialogue in her head, she was not alone. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Christy Warren -
Joanne Greene grew up in Boston during the 1960s and ’70s, a turning point for women in the United States. Doors were opening wider, and Joanne walked through as many as she could. As a young woman, she dove headfirst into San Francisco radio and television, and went on to host and produce award-winning feminist and other timely features and talk shows for decades. Throughout, she worked at having a great marriage and being an exemplary parent. But underlying her high-achieving life was a sometimes-destructive need for control. Vulnerability and dependency were okay . . . for other people. Joanne’s value was tied to how in charge, how together, and how productive she was. Then she suffered a traumatic accident—and it set her on a journey of discovery that taught her true power came in the still moments, the moments when she not only loosened her grip but even allowed herself to crack. In fragility, Joanne found, there was beauty—and possibility, too. By Accident is a story about discovering that control is a seductive illusion and how letting go of the need for it can reveal great strength and lead us to even firmer ground. Pub Date: June 20, 2023 Author: Joanne Greene -
In this beautifully crafted blend of memoir and guidebook, Suzanne Anderson invites you to walk with her through the brutal landscape of trauma and loss in a way that is profoundly transformational. Whether you are going through a personal dark night or struggling with these uncertain and disruptive global times, this book offers a proven pathway to allow the breaking down to be the breaking open into a whole new way of living, loving, and leading. Structured into three distinct parts, Part One sets the stage and walks us through the shocking event of her husband’s suicide and the dismantling of her life. Using compelling personal stories throughout, Part Two explores how to embody each of the eight critical capacities of resilience, and Part Three provides some of the inner tools, rituals and broader perspectives needed. Drawing from her years of exploration into the development of human potential and the personal, shattering journey of loss, Suzanne guides you to make your own path through the darkest of times—and to become a light in the world that others can look to in their own times of need. Pub Date: June 13, 2023 Author: Suzanne Anderson -
“. . . a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined.” —CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass A marine biologist’s adventurous life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. His radical approach to recovery clashes with her instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent yet unforgiving waters. Author: Beth Ann Mathews Publication Date: May 2, 2023 -
In the spirit of The Glass Castle and The Burning Light of Two Stars, Antonia Deignan delivers what New York Times best-selling author Julie Cantrell calls a “a heart-shattering memoir of painful truth and soulful healing.” As a child, Antonia perceived her father’s nighttime visits as special acts of love. On some deeper level, though, she knew what was happening wasn’t right. To escape, she began creating imaginary worlds and used dreams to transport her away from her fears. As she got older, Antonia traded those fantasies for dance—but despite her outlets she remained trapped underwater, without a lifeline to make her feel fundamentally safe. For years, Antonia silently navigated the dark fathoms of her internalized pain, which manifested in myriad self-destructive habits: disordered eating, drug and alcohol abuse. Only decades later, while recovering from a serious bike accident, did she finally stop running and start reflecting—giving her the power to fully accept what had happened to her in her early life and ultimately forgive the unforgivable. Raw and visceral yet gorgeously lyrical, Underwater Daughter masterfully conveys not only the rippling effects of childhood trauma but also the hope that with honesty and work, healing is possible. Pub Date: May 2, 2023 Author: Antonia Deignan
