Brutalities

A Love Story

By: Margo Steines

Narrated by: Margo Steines

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.

©2023 Margo Steines (P)2023 Dreamscape Media

Beautiful writing, riveting story

Loved this sophisticated, complicated, beautifully written story. Steines has a wonderful reading presence, too. Excellent.

Candid and absorbing

I’m so glad Margot was willing to peel back the layers of her life and display the many conflicting, wonderful, painful things there. An absorbing and insightful memoir.

Absolutely Mind blowing

Margo tells us her story of, what most consider, taboo and unrelatable topics in such a beautifully constructed way, that it feels like we've walked in those shoes through our own struggles. She tells tales that would have me clutching my pearls, if I owned pearls (I prefer spiked studs), yet she glides through them with such an ease and grace that make them so delightful, even while leaving an aftertaste of sadness. There’s an element of relatability for everyone, as she’s writing through the early days of the pandemic, and she does a glorious job of taking us right back to 2020 and how we all felt as a collective.

A potent cocktail of vulnerability, courage, and insight.

Ms Steines presents herself and her history naked, stark, and beautiful in the precise language with which she invites us to dissect her story, her body, and the men with whom she has interacted. A kind of hero’s tale as she struggles, survives, struggles again, and ultimately reconciles herself. Provocative and gripping. Shared by the author on a matter of fact, candid, and confidential reading.

Brutally Honest

A deeply felt and well written memoir, which takes the reader into the pain within us that we seldom discuss out loud. Worth reading.