When I think of my hell days, I think of crime scenes. Familiar sites, made uncanny with violence.

In the fluorescent tedium of a call center in 2018, acclaimed novelist Laura Elizabeth Woollett finds herself meticulously plotting her own death—until her period arrives, and equilibrium with it. After years of dismissing these monthly turns, she’s diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Then, at thirty-three, she becomes pregnant and experiences a reprieve, but will it last?

Through case studies, interviews, extensive medical research, forays into history, true crime, and algorithmic rabbit-holes, Woollett looks beyond herself to assemble a chorus of PMDD sufferers, along with dedicated scientists and clinicians. Navigating the impossible terrain between a potentially fatal disorder and treatments that can be almost as dangerous, Hell Days is a testament to the precarity and dignity of life as a periodically suicidal person in an often-brutal world.