Broken Chocolate

"In Rachel Miranda's brilliant and beautiful debut novel, family love is the strongest power in the universe. Broken Chocolate is both a suspenseful medical drama and a marvel of empathy and insight." Brian Morton, author of Tasha: A Son's Memoir, winner of the Pushcart Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship

The Sandor family has always been close-birthday breakfasts, Friday-night dinners, and the inventive pastries Liv dreams up as a chef. Sam, a physician in the Yale Brain Injury Department, fills their table with cautionary tales from his patients, reminders of how suddenly life can change. But when sixteen-year-old Zoey-popular, ambitious, and the bright center of the family-falls into a coma after a freak accident, their world fractures.

Her twin brother, Zev, must confront life without her protective shadow. Wrestling with social anxiety, he turns to his art to make sense of their abrupt separation, even as he privately navigates a budding romance with Zoey's best friend. Sam faces an agonizing conflict of interest and a crisis of faith, haunted by the childhood losses that led him to medicine. And Liv, shaken from her steady calm, fights to hold her family together with apricot tarts, stubborn hope, and whatever strength she can gather.

Inspired by the patients, doctors, and caregivers the author encountered while managing a brain trauma clinic, Broken Chocolate moves us to consider what defines a meaningful life, when to honor old dreams, and when it's time to build new ones.