This is a beautiful book - lots of lists and thoughts and metaphors. Trees and houses and moving forwards . It felt like the privilege of being inside the jumbled thoughts of an abused woman living in a nightmare into moving on into list making and sorting and surviving..
The kind of writing that stays with you.

*ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

Persephone’s Children is a memoir unlike any other. It is told through many different essays, in many different forms, including (but not limited to) an alphabetized list, a field study, multiple choice Q&A, religious and cultural rituals, text message exchanges, a glossary of terms, as well as regular essays.

The main subject of the memoir is McCandless’s most recent abusive marriage, and how she got help to leave. The author also discusses the domestic abuse from her first marriage, childhood sexual assault, her eating disorder and how it relates to her racial identity as a mixed Black person with intergenerational trauma, and her relationship with her parents and other family members that may have led her to “lose her voice”. She discusses how therapy, her daughters, and ultimately writing and its surrounding community helped her find her voice again.