About the Book
About the Book
Death Valley
![](https://www.readinggroupguides.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/book_main/covers/Death%20Valley%20PB.jpg)
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 high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow --- for both her father in the ICU and a 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 awaits her 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.
Death Valley
- Publication Date: May 7, 2024
- Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism
- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Scribner
- ISBN-10: 1668024861
- ISBN-13: 9781668024867