Milk Fed

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew whose religion has become calorie restriction. She works as a low-level assistant at a Los Angeles talent management agency, and her days are shaped by obsessive food rituals that give her an illusion of control over her existence. At night she pedals nowhere on an elliptical machine. She is content to carry on this way until her therapist urges her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her to count calories.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a full-figured young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is determined to feed her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully drawn to Miriam, to her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family. As the two grow closer, Rachel begins a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk and honey.

Melissa Broder, author of The Pisces and So Sad Today, uses vivid fantasy and emotional insight to write about appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire and spiritual longing, and how people compartmentalize instincts that so often depend on one another. The novel is funny, erotic and tender, and it considers love, certainty and the question of what we are all being fed.