Nearly new condition with dust jacket in tact. In Melissa Broder’s astounding new novel, a woman arrives 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 narrator or 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 wide that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her within this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant. This is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative and universal. This is Death Valley.