The world within the black and white squares can be confounding and exhilarating. As a young girl, that’s the world in which Katie found refuge from her parents’ constant fighting and mean kids at school. By her early twenties, Katie had largely left chess behind. When she was asked to compete on her college chess team at the Pan-American Intercollegiate Chess Championships, she thought it would be her final tournament. But chess drew her back in. She soon found herself immersed in the world that revolved around the board. The brilliance. The drinking. The glamor. She was hooked. As she rose to become one of the top 100 women chess players in the nation, she became more and more integrated into the chess world. But staying there came at a cost—which, despite her love of the game, she wasn’t sure she could pay. Katie’s deeply personal memoir provides a rare window into the insular world of elite chess as seen through a woman’s eyes, while sharing the intimate details of her coming-of-age journey on and off the board.