Welcome to the Madden America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry, and social justice.

Greetings. I'm Amy Biancoly, family editor here at Mad in America. Today I'll be speaking with Deborah Kasden, author of

Rollback the World, a sister's memoir, in which she describes her extraordinary late sister Rachel,

poet, musician, free spirit, and her decades-long journey through psychiatric treatment until

finally she found a place of peace and community.

Kaston is a longtime business and technology writer who pivoted to memoir writing on a quest to tell

her sister's story, joining the Westport Writers Workshop. Her book, published in October by

She Writes Press, is a moving and nuanced portrait filled with love and grief, candor, and complexity.

Deborah Kasden, thank you for speaking with me today.

Oh, I'm glad to be here, Amy.

This is obviously a big topic.

It's deeply personal.

The book covers so much ground, so many years, your sister's

entire life, your relationship with her, the family dynamics, there's so much in it. And she was

an indelible person, quite a life, quite a story. I know we don't have time to dig into every

last piece of it, but for a start,

if you could tell us who she was, what you loved about her, so that as we get into this

conversation and dig a little deeper into all that happened, people will have a sense of who

Rachel was and what she means to you still.

Well, Rachel was my big sister, first and foremost to me, born three and a half years before I was.

She was a leader to me. She was a, as you said, a free spirit that became increasingly clear as years went on.

She led me places.

...