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From the Cyclops Cave: A Braided Memoir
“As epic in scale as the Greek tales of the land this story is ultimately built upon, Don Schofield’s saga of growing up is a bildungsroman writ large.”—Liz Stephens, Director, Mojave Desert Arts
“Poignant and profound. From the Cyclops Cave looks backward and inward—and isn’t this something we should all do?”—Sharman Apr Russell, author of Standing in the My Life as a Pantheist
A braided memoir of resilience, self-discovery, and the search for home.
From the Cyclops A Braided Memoir intertwines past and present, weaving a turbulent childhood in 1950s California with an adult life shaped by solitude on the Cycladic islands of Greece. Abandoned by his father and raised by strangers, the author grows up yearning for connection; decades later, in a primitive hut locals call the Cyclops Cave, he finds both refuge and reckoning. Through braided chapters moving between memory and the immediacy of Greek island life, this poignant memoir explores resilience, identity, and the lifelong journey to belong.
“Poignant and profound. From the Cyclops Cave looks backward and inward—and isn’t this something we should all do?”—Sharman Apr Russell, author of Standing in the My Life as a Pantheist
A braided memoir of resilience, self-discovery, and the search for home.
From the Cyclops A Braided Memoir intertwines past and present, weaving a turbulent childhood in 1950s California with an adult life shaped by solitude on the Cycladic islands of Greece. Abandoned by his father and raised by strangers, the author grows up yearning for connection; decades later, in a primitive hut locals call the Cyclops Cave, he finds both refuge and reckoning. Through braided chapters moving between memory and the immediacy of Greek island life, this poignant memoir explores resilience, identity, and the lifelong journey to belong.
358 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 24, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 15, 2025
Poets make the best writers! Based in Greece, Don Schofield is a poet whose work I’ve admired for some time (I have a special soft spot for a poem he wrote called “Once on Ithaca”). I’ve never read a memoir like this one. This is a braided story, one that switches back and forth between the poet’s harrowing childhood in California, and the other which follows him one solitary summer on an island in Greece, where he truly faces the way his childhood colors his present life.
Freud has written of the way that in some people trauma is actually bypassed in the mind: it is not experienced directly and instead is registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art and this is precisely what we are shown in the book.
On the island, as the poet swims and writes and drinks…. As he toggles back and forth between the two sides of himself, dark and light, he faces the way his childhood has become a kind of interruption of life, like a broken thread. There is a beautiful scene in a tavern on the island. He’s dreading going back to Athens to his job and he’s sitting alone having a gin and tonic after some wine and is having imaginary conversations with the people from his childhood.
At heart, he has felt abandoned…. Because that is what happened as the boy is taken from his mother, a mother who didn’t fight to see him again, and then was shuttled between step-mothers and his fathers… and yet, I kept feeling that this little boy was so loved by these fathers, as troubled as the men were (even the priest). But they kept coming back. It was so moving to read.
More than anything I loved the present day story. Art can save a person’s life, and this memoir was such a journey to follow along as the poet becomes a poet and a writer, a teacher, professor and friend. He has found a real home in the world. The writing is stunning and the story so moving and unforgettable.
Freud has written of the way that in some people trauma is actually bypassed in the mind: it is not experienced directly and instead is registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art and this is precisely what we are shown in the book.
On the island, as the poet swims and writes and drinks…. As he toggles back and forth between the two sides of himself, dark and light, he faces the way his childhood has become a kind of interruption of life, like a broken thread. There is a beautiful scene in a tavern on the island. He’s dreading going back to Athens to his job and he’s sitting alone having a gin and tonic after some wine and is having imaginary conversations with the people from his childhood.
At heart, he has felt abandoned…. Because that is what happened as the boy is taken from his mother, a mother who didn’t fight to see him again, and then was shuttled between step-mothers and his fathers… and yet, I kept feeling that this little boy was so loved by these fathers, as troubled as the men were (even the priest). But they kept coming back. It was so moving to read.
More than anything I loved the present day story. Art can save a person’s life, and this memoir was such a journey to follow along as the poet becomes a poet and a writer, a teacher, professor and friend. He has found a real home in the world. The writing is stunning and the story so moving and unforgettable.
December 14, 2025
"Cyclops Cave" is a wonderful, soulful, remarkable book, not to be missed.
Don Schofield's new memoir, "CYCLOPS CAVE" is terrific. It is a profound excursion through a complex, sometimes difficult but full life. The language is highly evocative, not surprising since Schofield is a highly regarded poet. "A DIFFERENT HEAVEN, New & Selected Poems" was published in 2023. One of the poems in that book, "I DON'T KNOW THE LOCAL" contains the lines: ...I veer inward/to flint emotions/which also can't be named/syntax felt... In some ways it feels as if this passage presages "CYCLOPS CAVE." In the Memoir Schofield veers inward to flint emotions which often can't be named. After a brief chapter orienting the reader to his present life in Greece, CYCLOPS cuts to the dry interior of California and Nevada and Schofield as a small boy. It picks up his complex feelings about an irresponsible father—who is determined to keep him away from his mother, a father who loves him, nurtures him, and ignores him. Schofield's description is heartfelt and evocative. The memoir continues moving back and forth between the American west and his life in Greece. As Schofield says, it's "braided." In short CYCLOPS CAVE captures the life journey of a poet fully present in his solitude.
Don Schofield's new memoir, "CYCLOPS CAVE" is terrific. It is a profound excursion through a complex, sometimes difficult but full life. The language is highly evocative, not surprising since Schofield is a highly regarded poet. "A DIFFERENT HEAVEN, New & Selected Poems" was published in 2023. One of the poems in that book, "I DON'T KNOW THE LOCAL" contains the lines: ...I veer inward/to flint emotions/which also can't be named/syntax felt... In some ways it feels as if this passage presages "CYCLOPS CAVE." In the Memoir Schofield veers inward to flint emotions which often can't be named. After a brief chapter orienting the reader to his present life in Greece, CYCLOPS cuts to the dry interior of California and Nevada and Schofield as a small boy. It picks up his complex feelings about an irresponsible father—who is determined to keep him away from his mother, a father who loves him, nurtures him, and ignores him. Schofield's description is heartfelt and evocative. The memoir continues moving back and forth between the American west and his life in Greece. As Schofield says, it's "braided." In short CYCLOPS CAVE captures the life journey of a poet fully present in his solitude.
February 5, 2026
Lyrical, raw and heartbreaking
A memoir that follows the eddies of memory and pain, the efforts at resolution and the search for beauty. Schofield toggles between his painful childhood years of serial abandonment by the people he should have been able to trust and his years of as a poet and academic in Greece. Evocative, beautiful and sad, but ultimately honest and brave.
A memoir that follows the eddies of memory and pain, the efforts at resolution and the search for beauty. Schofield toggles between his painful childhood years of serial abandonment by the people he should have been able to trust and his years of as a poet and academic in Greece. Evocative, beautiful and sad, but ultimately honest and brave.
March 9, 2026
I felt all the emotions of the author.
The Cyclops Cave moved me through time --between childhood and adulthood, California and Greece. The dialog with self and others creates a tension between the need for love and solitude.
The Cyclops Cave moved me through time --between childhood and adulthood, California and Greece. The dialog with self and others creates a tension between the need for love and solitude.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews