The year she turned 30, Lisa A. Phillips fell in love with an unavailable man. At first her feelings gave her hope and pleasure. But he didn’t respond to her increasingly persistent efforts, and something inside her shifted.

Her unrequited love became obsessive, transforming her — a stable, accomplished professional — into someone unrecognizable and driving her to a very dark place. Everything came to a head one day when, in response to her incessant pounding on his apartment door, he emerged with a baseball bat in one hand and a phone to call the cops in the other.

How did this radical upheaval occur? Years later, a fully healed Phillips set out to understand the one-sided fixation that had overtaken her so completely. She opened up about her experience, first in a widely read New York Times “Modern Love” column and now in Unrequited: Women and Romantic Obsession (Harper; $25.99 hardcover, January 2015), which examines the perils and power of obsessive love in women.

The Newtown native will return to the location of her first job — C.H. Booth Library, where the 1986 Newtown High School graduate worked as a desk clerk — on Tuesday, October 6. Ms Phillips will be at the library from 7 to 8 pm, when she will offer a reading from her book.

From Ms Phillips’s perspective, Unrequited explores the many dimensions of romantic obsession, uncovering the forces that inspire it, considering its possible meanings, and probing its inherent dangers and surprising benefits.

Interweaving her story with candid interviews, online survey results, and in-depth research in science, psychology, cultural history, and literature, Ms Phillips details how romantic obsession takes root, blossoms, and shapes thoughts and behaviors.

Esther Perel, the author of Mating in Captivity, said Phillips “tackles the pain of desire that is left unreciprocated with empathy and wisdom.” Julie Powell (Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession) calls the book “a gorgeously written, often cringe-inducing, but ultimately consoling deconstruction of the confounding power of unreciprocated passion.”

The heroic anguish of male longing is a familiar theme, but society tends to judge women in unrequited love more harshly and at the same time seems to belittle their plight.

Ms Phillips ventures beyond the reductive pop culture depictions of all-consuming female infatuation as demonic or ridiculous — that is, as “bunny boilers” like the notorious Fatal Attraction character — to shed light on a surprisingly widespread phenomenon that has long been misunderstood.

In her opinion, the disruptive energy of unrequited love, while unquestionably painful and sometimes dangerous, can also be an unexpected catalyst for growth. Unrequited love, she asserts, is potentially meaningful and life-altering.

Lisa A. Phillips is a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz. In addition to Unrequited, she is also the author of Public Radio: Behind the Voices. Her articles have appeared in many national publications, including The New York Times, Psychology Today, Cosmopolitan, Salon, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. A former radio journalist, she has contributed stories to NPR and other public radio outlets.

Booth Library, at 25 Main Street, can be reached by calling 203-426-4533.