The Body Tourist: A Memoir of Hunger and the Search for Home

Newly graduated from college, following a three-year struggle with anorexia, Shavin is thrilled to land a job as a counselor at a residential alcohol and drug treatment center. Having been through therapy, she feels uniquely suited to the job. But thanks to the insight of a brilliant, compassionate boss, the brash candor of a fellow troubled coworker, and a forbidden near-affair with a client, Shavin realizes how dangerously ill-equipped-and unrecovered-she actually is.
This smart memoir follows Shavin as she navigates the territory of post-recovery recovery, eventually earning a master's degree and becoming a therapist, all while living in disastrous houses, dating luckless men, and continuing to play games with her weight. When her father dies unexpectedly, she resolves to change her life. But if she is to truly recover, she must confront the complex dynamics that drove her to starve in the first place.
A gifted and unflinching guide, Shavin offers in The Body Tourist a fascinating tour of the anorexic mind, as well as an exploration of the often-unacknowledged truth that recovery is a journey, rather than a destination.

Praise for The Body Tourist

The Body Tourist is riveting reading. Dana Lise Shavin can write with both hands, by turns comic and tragic, and always fiercely honest. --Jacqueline Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

"This is what I want in a memoir, a personal journey that pulls me in, told beautifully, with shattering self-awareness and an eye for detail. What sets it apart is Shavin's vivid prose and gutting sense of humor. --Eleanor McCallie Cooper, author of Grace: An American Woman in China and Dragonfy Dreams

"Brilliant. I couldn't put it down." --Suzanne Fisher Staples, author of Shiva's Fire; The Green Dog: A Mostly True Story; and Under the Persimmon Tree