Elena Vanishing: A Memoir [Hardcover]

As heard on NPR's Diane Rehm Show!
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia. Told entirely from Elena's perspective over a five-year period and cowritten with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena's memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.Elena Dunkle spent her teenage years exploring the German countryside and considers Germany her second home. She was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa at the age of seventeen and has always wanted to shed a light on her experiences with this complicated and misunder?stood disorder. Elena currently roams across America with her wonderful husband and her travel-size Chihuahua, Mimsy. This is her first book. Find out more about Elena at www.elenadunkle.com.

Clare B. Dunkle is an award-winning author of seven acclaimed fantasy and science fiction novels, including The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy, the first book of which was a winner of the 2004 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature. A Texan (and former Texas librarian), Clare now lives in Germany, but travels often to the United States to see her family, especially her two daughters, Valerie and Elena, and her grandchildren. Find out more about Clare at www.claredunkle.com. A painfully honest look at a young woman's struggle. --School Library Journal I was stunned by Elena Vanishing and have been thinking and talking about it ever since I finished it. Without glamorizing it, Elena deals frankly and honestly with an extreme disease, and leaves me with a sense of hope and strength. -Lily Myers, slam poet and author of Shrinking Women Haunting and intimate. adds a new dimension to how we look at eating disorders. -lSÉ