Accomplished storyteller Kristen Millares Young’s communion with an ancient mother goddess and her quest to reconcile the incongruities of her “maddening matriarchs” provide an intriguing thematic framework for her first memoir-in-essays, Desire Lines. The Cuban American author’s 15 essays traverse volcanic landscapes and oceanic depths, Spanish villages and Parisian museum archives, in pursuit of “unfettered” joyful mothering and “a version of femininity” she can believe in.