Adventures of a Chess Girl

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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. </span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>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.</span></p>