Brutalities: a love story

A searing, vivid memoir that investigates the dynamics of violence, power, desire, and a body pushed to the brink. Quarantined in a southwestern desert city in the midst of her high-risk pregnancy, Margo Steines felt her life narrow around her growing body, compelling her to reckon with the violence entangled in its history. She was a professional dominatrix in New York City, a homestead farmer in a brutal relationship, a welder on a high-rise building crew and a Mixed Martial Arts enthusiast; each of her many lives brought a new vantage point from which to see how power and masculinity coalesce--and how her body paid the price. With unflinching candor, Steines searches for the roots of her erstwhile attraction to pain while charting the complicated triumph of tenderness and care.