‘Riotously original ... A triumph’ NEW YORK TIMES‘A journey unlike any you''ve read before’ NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH‘Her most profound book yet ... Surreal, hysterical and beguiling in every sense’ GLAMOURThe 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 o