In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her.What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path discovered on a nearby hike.

Out along the sun-scorched trail, the narrator 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.

Tombolo Books is thrilled to welcome Melissa Broder to the bookstore to discuss her latest novel DEATH VALLEY! PURCHASE YOUR COPY OF THE BOOK HERE!

Broder will be in conversation with HELEN HOUSE author Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya!

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Milk Fed, The Pisces, and Death Valley, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. She has written for The New York Times, Elle, and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @SoSadToday and @MelissaBroder and Instagram @RealMelissaBroder.

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya is a lesbian writer of essays, short stories, and pop culture criticism living in Orlando. She is the author of Helen House (Burrow Press 2022), a queer horror novelette. She is the managing editor of Autostraddle and the managing editor of TriQuarterly. Her short stories appear in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Catapult, The Offing, Joyland, The Rumpus, Cake Zine, and others. She was a 2021 nonfiction fellow and a 2023 speculative fiction writer in residence at Lambda Literary’s Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. She is currently a Tin House Fellow.