Stephanie Danler introduced scores of young readers to rosé and roast chicken through the eyes of a young waitress fresh out of college and new to New York in her debut novel Sweetbitter . However, you’ll find no shades of millennial pink in her upcoming memoir, Stray . While the book was written in the throes of Sweetbitter’s success , it perhaps speaks to the power of Danler’s fiction-writing to learn about the familial and romantic turmoil that was twisting tightly behind the curtain during that time. Split into three sections, Danler delves into the perpetrators of three separate traumas, with a keen eye for the ways these experiences have lingered in her own behavior as she finds herself turning into her own version of the monsters she’s escaping. One character in the following excerpt is literally referred to as The Monster and is the villain of an on-again, off-again love affair that never quite allowed Danler to find peace, if peace was even what she was searching for.