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Death Valley : a novel

Call Number

  • FICTION BROD (CEN, EAS)

Edition

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Publication Information

New York : Scribner, 2023.

Physical Description

232 pages ; 23 cm.

Summary

"The most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story. In Melissa Broder's astounding new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California desert to escape a cloud of sorrow-both for her father in the ICU and a disabled husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who recommends a nearby hike. Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What this woman finds inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant. This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death Valley"--