Melissa Broder’s newest novel, “Death Valley,” is considered her most personal yet because the protagonist’s journey through grief mirrored the author’s in a lot of ways, writes Annabel Graham for Vanity Fair.

Broder, a Bryn Mawr native who attended the Baldwin School, worked as a book publicist before releasing a poetry collection and then her first two novels, “The Pisces” and “Milk Fed”.

“Death Valley” depicts a writer’s journey through the desert to find creative inspiration, but also to escape the overwhelming grief she felt watching her father die and her husband struggle with a chronic illness.

She comes upon a mystical cactus which gave her visions of both her father and her husband.

At the time of writing the novel, Broder was also grappling with grief. Her father had been in a serious car accident in Philadelphia in 2020 and spent 6 months in the ICU before dying. And her husband’s chronic illness was worsening.

She herself made many pilgrimages through the Mojave Desert while traveling from her home in Los Angeles to Las Vegas where her sister lives.

“I was trying to escape this feeling of anticipatory grief. But you can’t escape a feeling, because the feeling’s inside you,” she told Vanity Fair.

Read how Broder uses magical realism to explore the nuances of grief in her latest novel in Vanity Fair.

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More on Melissa Broder’s writing process.