Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. "Like Persephone, Kate Schmitt is dragged to the Underworld, not by Hades but by her own DNA. This beautiful and heartbreaking memoir is addressed to the grandmother she never knew, a woman she resembles and whose demons she also shares. With meticulous, poetic language Schmitt describes her descent and her return to the world. 'My body is both castle and battlefield,' she says, and the ensuing siege pits one woman against the deepest impulses of her own blood. The magic of this book is that a true heroine emerges, one who has braved the snares of the past and stepped into the present moment completely herself."—Barbara Hamby