Processed Meats: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster

Nicole Walker writes with dazzling liquidity.
–ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING, author of Zoologies Nicole Walker made cheese and grew tomatoes as a means of coping when she failed to get pregnant. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, she cooked veggie burgers for friends and hamburgers for herself–to enjoy outside, six feet apart. Her Mormon ancestors canned peaches to prepare for the End of Days and congealed beef broth into aspic as a surefire cure for ailment. Throughout the richly layered essays of Processed Meats, Walker ponders food choices and life choices, dissecting how we process disaster, repackage it, and turn it into something edible.