Swimming In Trees: A Story of Soul, by Maria Stokes Katzenbach, is not an easy book. It is intriguing--once started, it can't be put aside to finish later. It is powerful, and mind-changing. It is compelling, and unique. But it is not easy.

Katzenbach says "my book is about overcoming my fear of madness." She adds that "I probably had to become crazy, in some way, and survive it before I could overcome that fear."

She turned her spiritual journey into a story in order to heal herself and embrace all that she is, including the goddess within. Through storytelling she found "my soul--my murdered soul. Alive." She learns the eternal truth of birth, death, rebirth.

Set in the Hudson Valley of New York state, much of the story occurs at the local Y, a place that is both a sanctuary and an asylum for women. Katzenbach's story is filled with unforgettable characters, like Manda, who has been running for 27,000 years, Rulla, the "Queen of the Y," and Benjamin, who understands far more than most five-year-olds. Katzenbach expertly weaves together individual and community forces to reach a startling, yet inevitable, denouement. She says "if my book opens the door to [when] women will all tell their own stories of soul, in their own voice, then Swimming In Trees will have done for others what it did for me..." Swimming in Trees: A Story of Soul is a woman's book for women who struggling to recover their souls. While it may not be an easy read, it's a good, rewarding read.