In this beautifully written memoir, both gut-wrenching and inspiring, award-winning writer Jon Reiner tells the story of his agonizing battle with Crohn’s disease—and the extraordinary places his hunger and obsession with food took him. I’m a glutton in a greyhound’s body, a walking contradiction, in the grip of the one thing I can’t have—food, writes Reiner, who details what happens when that which keeps you alive, that bonds us together and marks life’s special occasions, becomes a toxic substance, an inflammatory invader.

His unvarnished account depicts an explosive medical emergency, a marriage in crisis, children faced with grown-up fears, a man at a life-and-death crossroads sifting through his past and his present. And it captures a tough, courageous climb out of hopelessness as Reiner began a process of healing in body and mind, discovering a renewed appetite, any way he could manage it, for the things that truly matter most.