In her compelling and frank memoir, Notes from Nethers (Academy Chicago Publishers, 2007), Sandra Eugster '82 remembers her childhood growing up in a commune in rural Virginia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nethers, as the commune came to be called, was started by Eugster's "liberal, radical, union organizing mother," Carla. Committed to radical social change and caught up in the fervor of counterculture, Carla, separated from the father of her three children, unilaterally sold their middle-class house in Baltimore, and move to a rural area nearby. This was in 1969, when Eugster was 9 years old.

Eugster recounts the difficult transition from a traditional family life to one in a communal setting, and her book is a vivid account of a time and place long gone. As a piece of American cultural history, and the history of efforts to create a utopian society, the memoir elucidates the fact that no matter how ideally a societal structure is conceived, its enactment cannot escape the imperfections of the humans who embody it.

Eugster earned her PhD in counseling psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is a partner with her husband Richard Levine in the Independent Psychology Alliance.