Try free for 30 days

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
Death Valley cover art

Death Valley

By: Melissa Broder
Narrated by: Melissa Broder
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $21.26

Buy Now for $21.26

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

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. 

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.

©2023 Melissa Broder (P)2023 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic Reviews

I’ve never read a novel that portrays grief quite like Death Valley. Somehow, Melissa Broder captures both the punishing ordinariness of loss while also showing us how extraordinary it is to have been here at all – and to love each other besides. There is deep wisdom in these pages, and I know I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time (Mary Beth Keane, author of ASK AGAIN, YES)

A journey unlike any you've read before. Death Valley by Melissa Broder is a beautifully wild leap into the mysterious desert that is grief (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS and FRIDAY BLACK)

Vulnerable, witty, trippy and conceptually dazzling all at once (Kimberly King Parsons, author of BLACK LIGHT)

What listeners say about Death Valley

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

This has really stayed with me

It’s so satisfying when an author grows with you (or you grow with an author!) I’ve read all of Melissa Broder’s work and I love that after novels about how one fills the void she’s simply written one about the void itself.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.