THE LAND OF MILK HONEY, written by C. Pam Zhang appeals with ease to the food lover.

Food is the landscape. Food is the seducer in this work, however, it is not what the novel is about. The narrator, an unnamed young Asian American chef finds herself in a quarter life crisis—possibly a mid life crisis since her generation is not projected to live as longer as the previous one.

Smog, unsuccessfully debated by political factions, decimates the planet’s resources. Crops won’t grow, animals die, the whole ecosystem starts to shut down and famine sweeps Earth. 

The young chef is left wondering who she might be if her career and passion no longer exists. Who she might be capable of loving if she is never let back into her homeland of America and if she will ever properly grieve the loss of her previously unsupportive mother. 

Big themes arch over the story - rich versus poor. The fate of the wealthy versus the fate of the workers. Under these arches though, the young chef intimately faces her inner demons while also finally claiming her value in the midst of her own compromises. 

The book literally makes you hungry. Hungry for both food and for a fullness to life. 

Maureen Corrigan’s review for NPR put it best: Land of Milk and Honey is an atmospheric and poetically suspenseful novel about all manner of appetites: for power, food, love, life…Given that it's a novel about the struggle to fend off deprivation and extinction, Land of Milk and Honey is gloriously lush. Zhang's sensuous style makes us see, smell and, above all, taste the lure of that sun-dappled mountain enclave.

The also unnamed antagonist is an Elon Musk type who has a back up plan if his earthly technologies fail—which is of course an alternate planet for human civilization. 

I felt like I climbed in to someone else’s mind and body for these 230 pages. I stretched my empathy and expanded my thoughts about the future of food and life on this planet. But mostly, I appreciated that although C. Pam Zhang tackles the very familiar speculative climate fiction as of late, she also poses her own sense of hope in humanity in the end. 

Humans have survived natural and man made disasters since the beginning of time. Zhang suggests that hope may be hiding in the most unexpected places. For this perspective I am grateful, and because of this, the book sticks with me on a daily basis.