Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir

A stirring memoir from the acclaimed writer praised by Thomas Pynchon for having "the guts to go into the deepest core of herself, her time, her history, and risk more than anybody else has so far, just out of a love for the truth and a need to tell it."

Called "breathtakingly ambitious" by the New York Times for her novels' forays into war, history, the lives of the homeless, and the minds of cyborgs, Marge Piercy, one of the few writers of our time to be highly praised as both a poet and a novelist, turns her lens inward for the first time as she shares her thoughts on life and explores her development as a woman and writer. She revisits the people and places that have shaped her experiences and inspired her work. And she pays tribute to the one loving constant that has offered her comfort and meaning even as the faces and events in her life have changed: her beloved cats.

With searing honesty Piercy tells of her strained childhood growing up in a religiously split working-class family in Detroit. She examines her myriad friendships and relationships, including two painful early marriages, and reveals their effects on her creativity and career. More than a reminiscence of things past, however, Sleeping with Cats is also a celebration of the present and the future, as Piercy shares her views on aging, creativity, and finding a lasting and improbable love with a man fourteen years younger than herself. A chronicle of the turbulent and exciting journey of one artist's life, Sleeping with Cats is a deeply intimate, unforgettable story.