Jonelle is a woman possessed by her possessions. Creative, vibrant and and coping with largely untreated bipolar disorder, her profound appreciation for all things beautiful and unique manifests into mountains of accumulated "stuff." This fascinating memoir considers the pervasiveness of the objects we love, and the weight of their remains. In Ten Boxes: A Story of Stuff, mental illness is stripped bare of popular perception and redressed through intimate witness, tinted by both the despondency and the joie de vivre of madness. In language both realistic and lyrical, the author interweaves the details of her mother's life and her own into a testimony about the complexities of family and the consequences of our choices.