‘Riotously original ... A triumph’ NEW YORK TIMES\n\n‘A journey unlike any you've read before’ NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH\n‘Her most profound book yet ... Surreal, hysterical and beguiling in every sense’\nGLAMOUR\nThe most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a\ndarkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.\nA woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that\nplagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow —\nfor both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the\nmotel provides, however, is not peace but a path, thanks to a receptionist who\nrecommends a nearby hike.\nOut on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and\nshape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through\nits side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this\nmystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and\npoignant.\nThis is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest. This is Death\nValley.\nPRAISE FOR THE PISCES\n'Of all the books that I read this summer I think this was my absolute favourite. It really\nblew me away' DOLLY ALDERTON\n'Frank, provocative and brilliant' INDEPENDENT\n'Hilarious, poignant, sexy. A brilliant story about why we crave connection and how to find\nourselves' ELLE\n'Laugh-out-loud funny' i