"Both personal narrative and revealing cultural analysis, Body Story is Julia K. De Pree's examination of her journey from adolescence to adulthood and from anorexia to health." "For De Pree, between being a girl and being a woman, there was starvation. Body Story is her intimate account of girlhood, virginity, anorexia, and motherhood. De Pree's prose is spare and unguarded, detailing in vivid flashbacks and vignettes the sources of her inner pain." "De Pree deftly renders the starkness of anorexia along with the process of recovery, relapse, and, ultimately, redemption. She also recounts her close relationship with the physical and cultural landscape, from her origins in the Midwest to the American South, Paris, and the vast New Mexico desert, and she explores her own psychic landscape as she meets the challenges of maturation, childbirth, and motherhood."--BOOK JACKET.