Desire Feeds the Feast

“A family memoir in its own right, Morrell excavates the places and people that made her while searching for a self entirely her own. Woven with humor and loss, adventure, uncertainty, and quiet joy."

—Griffin Dunne, author of The Friday Afternoon Club

"From the very first page, Desire Feeds the Feast pulls you in with sparkling detail, emotional depth, and effortlessly engrossing storytelling. Reading it was pure pleasure."

—Laurie Woolever, author of Care and Feeding: A Memoir

“I read it in a single sitting.”

—Tamar Adler, author of An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

“The surprise of this book is not that it contains beautiful writing, though it does on nearly every page. It is that its wisdom arrives so gently. Tarajia Morrell understands that the things which sustain us are rarely the things we spend our youth pursuing. What begins as the story of ambition gradually reveals itself to be a meditation on love, grief, home, and the discipline of caring for others. I finished this book feeling less that I had read someone's life than that I had been reminded how to better inhabit my own.”

—Andy Baraghani, author of The Cook You Want to Be

“An exquisite book about appetite, motherhood, class, beauty, and the wild human need to be fed.”

—Victoria James, sommelier and author of Wine Girl: The Trials and Triumphs of America’s Youngest Sommelier

"Sexy and raw, Desire Feeds the Feast tells of a bygone New York and yet is totally modern. Tarajia’s search for self, pleasure, and love in this frenetic city is at once nostalgic and in keeping with Gen Z's analog-curious shift. This memoir will make readers put down their smartphones, look around, and live deeply."

—Alyssa Shelasky, author of This Might Be Too Personal and editor of New York Magazine's "Sex Diaries"

"A deeply gratifying emotional feast of a memoir: poetic, dramatic, romantic, atmospheric, sensual, evocative, poignant, heartbreaking, heartwarming."

—Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman

“A layered reminder that life is complicated and shiny and fun and messy, and that if you power through, the ending you need will, most always, meet you. It is a pleasure to be in Tarajia’s world—seeing, tasting, loving, suffering, and ultimately witnessing her gentle triumph. As a bookseller, this is a memoir I will press into the hands of readers, especially those standing at the beginning of something."

—Kira Wizner, Proprietor of Merritt Bookstore