D is for Demons: For Julia: For Julia

Fretful that her lifelong struggle with anxiety, depression and misplaced approval seeking may be hereditary, first-time author Joni Pitt is determined to save her young daughter from a similar fate. Outlining her real-life passage to the suburban Seventh Circle of Hell through a minefield of eating disorders, twisted corporate star-making machines, postpartum depression and crushing humiliation on the corporate Mommy Track, Pitt captures an Origin of the Demon Species across five years of alternately amusing and heartbreaking journals. Ultimately, time and counseling provide the perspective to strike an armed truce with the demons of anxiety and depression, to deconstruct their antics and to pass on the wisdom of experience to her daughter.

In D is for Demons, Pitt ("Mommy") animates her otherworldly tormenters with a whimsical writing style that colors her journey downward and back to near-redemption. Knowing that demons are managed, never vanquished, she guides daughter Julia in all aspects of spy-worthy demon counterinsurgency. Her message is delivered in short chapters that range from cheeky advice for fostering destructive habits, to finding an honest existence, to the mandatory acceptance of personal responsibility. In sync with Pitt's emotional growth, D is for Demons evolves from a Demon Handbook of Dirty Tricks to a matriarchal family cookbook for living, passed from a loving mother to daughter and intended to span generations. The book symbolizes the determination of mothers of every species, however wounded, to stand between danger and their offspring.