Poet and artist Alice Lee retraces her life in Alaska, China, Italy, Washington and elsewhere, reinventing herself and refusing to be defined by her genetic inheritance. While the family illnesses of schizophrenia and ataxia are the stones that weight her shoulders, Lee wears the necklace with grace. She travels, teaches, raises two daughters, creates art, finds love and writes of houses, floods and sex as part of her personal mythology. Hers is a vision of the whole woman with a past, a voice, responsibilities and an open heart.