All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer by Karen Babine

Babine is a poet and a scholar, and her essays are laced with lyricism, as well as scientific facts.

When her mother experiences neuropathy from the chemo she writes: “A lack of B12 can damage the nervous system as well as affect the brain functions.” Returning home after a doctor visit, she puts her pot named Phyllis on the stove to simmer soup for dinner, “that gorgeous cheerful shade of cobalt blue – Co – and I think about how cobalt is part of B12. I wonder if I could form an entire alphabet of neuropathy if I tried, if this is a new language I can create and put on the table.”