Investigative journalist Tracy Thompson spent years traveling throughout the South and discovered a place both amazingly similar to and radically different from the land she knew as a child. African Americans who left en masse for much of the twentieth century are returning in huge numbers, drawn back by a mix of ambition, family ties, and cultural memory. Though Southerners remain more churchgoing than other Americans, the evan-gelical Protestantism that defined Southern culture through the 1960s has been torn by bitter ideological schisms. Drawing on mountains of data, interviews, and a whole new set of historic archives, Thompson reveals the true character of a region still misunderstood by outsiders and even by its own people.

"Ms. Thompson takes a clear-eyed look at work as well as love, intertwining the success story of her journalistic career (she eventually becomes a reporter on The Washington Post) with her record of numb despair, suicide attempts and hospitalizations."—THE NEW YORK TIMES It hides in plain sight—in the colleague who drinks too much, in the friend who keeps canceling nights out, in the teenager who won't leave his room. It is frequently found running in tandem with other life-threatening diseases. It is in our colleagues, in our friends, in our families. Depression has afflicted Tracy Thompson most of her life. To the outsider looking in, she was a happy person with a rewarding career, a beautiful family, and a large circle of friends. But lurking beneath the veil of contentment was a dark, inexplicable, and all-consuming despair that she would later dub "The Beast." In this unflinching chronicle of her continuing battle against "The Beast," Tracy Thompson writes with ceaseless candor on her struggles, on the internal war that pursued her from youth to adulthood, undermining relationships, complicating her career, and threatening her family. Thompson recounts this most personal and vital battle to reclaim her life before depression could take it from her. A seminal work on depression at publication, THE BEAST remains an essential read to the millions of Americans enduring depression, in either their loved ones or themselves. It offers an insightful perspective on the disease, and a glimmer of hope. "Absorbing...powerful...It's a frightening tale that will strike a nerve in anyone whose life has been touched by the agony of mental illness."—PEOPLE MAGAZINE "In that resilient genre, the autobiography of melancholy, we hope for courage, honesty and the texture of the particular. Tracy Thompson supplies all in generous measure." —Peter Kramer, author of LISTENING TO PROZAC

An award-winning reporter for the Washington Post, Tracy Thompson was thirty-four when she was hospitalized and put on suicide watch during a major depressive episode. This event, the culmination of more than twenty years of silent suffering, became the point of departure for an in-depth, groundbreaking book on depression and her struggle with the disease. The Beast shattered stereotypes and inspired countless readers to confront their own battles with mental illness. Having written that book, and having found the security of a happy marriage, Thompson assumed that she had learned to manage her illness. But when she took on one of the most emotionally demanding jobs of all&#8212being a mother&#8212depression returned with fresh vengeance.

Very quickly Thompson realized that virtually everything she had learned up to then about dealing with depression was now either inadequate or useless. In fact, maternal depression was a different beast altogether. She tackled her problem head-on, meticulously investigating the latest scientific research and collecting the stories of nearly 400 mothers with depression. What she found was startling: a problem more widespread than she or any other mother struggling alone with this affliction could have imagined. Women make up nearly 12 million of the 19 million Americans affected by depression every year, experiencing episodes at nearly twice the rate that men do. Women suffer most frequently between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four&#8212not coincidentally, the primary childbearing years.

The Ghost in the House, the result of Thompson's extensive studies, is the first book to address maternal depression as a lifelong illness that can have profound ramifications for mother and child. A striking blend of memoir and journalism, here is an invaluable resource for the millions of women who are white-knuckling their way through what should be the most satisfying years of their lives. Thompson offers her readers a concise summary of the cutting-edge research in this field, deftly written prose, and, above all, hope.