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

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.

Beautiful writing, riveting story

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

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.

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.

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.

Read this book.

Incredible story written and read by an incredible talent. Hard to put down. A tour of the extremes of human physical and interior states. The book will introduce you to other worlds, and revive your faith in basic goodness and love. The title says it all.

What a Story!

Wow! Okayyyy...please write a second book. Wishing for you a happy baby, life and health.

Brutalities is everything everywhere

This book came to me by way of author Kelly McMasters impromptu social media review. Because I love her writing, I immediately downloaded it and have no stopped listening. Finishing and rewinding. Starting again. She’s given voice to parts of my past. Different in ways that are profound and exactly the same feelings. I feel seen in a way that I didn’t know existed. Telling our stories is everything. This book is everything and everyone and we need this kind of truth especially now.

Brutally Honest

This is one of the most relatable books I’ve listened to in a long time.