All That Fills Us
A Novel
Where to Purchase
About
The journey toward healing starts with a single brave step--but it is never walked alone
Mel Ellis knows that her eating disorder is ruining her life. Everyone tells her rehab is her best option, but she can't bring herself to go. Broke, broken, and empty in more ways than one, Mel launches one last-ditch effort to make hers a story worth telling. She will walk her own road to recovery along the lesser-known trails of the North American wilderness.
Though she is physically and mentally unprepared to face the difficulties that lay ahead, she sets off on foot from Michigan. Her goal? Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State. During the long journey, she meets strangers with their own stories, as well as ghosts from her past who can no longer be ignored. But though the land she travels threatens her success at every turn, it's her own dark thoughts she'll have to overcome in order to find peace in the life and the body she has been given.
"Brave and compelling. Mel's journey toward revelation and hope is an invitation for us to see ourselves as God sees us and to discover--or rediscover--why our stories matter."--Sharon Garlough Brown, author of Shades of Light and the Sensible Shoes series
"With humor and compassion, intricate insights, and singular descriptions, Autumn Lytle has captured the pain of encroaching mental illness. May there be many more healing stories from this truly gifted author."--Jane Kirkpatrick, bestselling author of The Healing of Natalie Curtis
Endorsements
"Stories can enlarge our capacity for empathy. In her brave and compelling novel, All That Fills Us, Autumn Lytle grants us the privilege of inhabiting the mind and heart of a young woman battling an eating disorder. Nothing is concealed here; the fears, shame, self-hatred, and obsessive thoughts that plague and assault Mel Ellis provide opportunities for us to explore our own shadows in the light of God's grace and compassion. Mel's journey toward revelation and hope is an invitation for us to see ourselves as God sees us and to discover--or rediscover--why our stories matter."
Sharon Garlough Brown, author of Shades of Light and the Sensible Shoes series
"You don't have to have poor body image or an eating disorder to be fed by the charmingly disarming debut novel All That Fills Us. I did not want this story to end. With humor and compassion, intricate insights, and singular descriptions, Autumn Lytle has captured the pain of encroaching mental illness. She's also taken us on a journey with words to breach wounds and remind us of the grace of unexpected community. May there be many more healing stories from this truly gifted author."
Jane Kirkpatrick, bestselling author of The Healing of Natalie Curtis
"Brimming with beauty and perfectly paced, this poignant novel connected with me in ways I didn't think a story about a girl with an eating disorder could. I was stunned to see so much of myself in the character of Mel--striving to achieve, consistently hard on herself, and hoping that her efforts might amount to something meaningful in the end. Autumn Lytle's moving debut is one of those books that will linger in the hearts and minds of those who read it."
Erin Bartels, award-winning author of All That We Carried
"Autumn Lytle's All That Fills Us takes the reader on a journey they will not expect--both as they accompany the main character's physical adventure and her emotional pilgrimage. But it's a story that will truly make the reader believe they know and may have embraced--or perhaps are--the main character. They'll also want to play all the supporting cast member roles (or most of them) and will emerge from the reading experience wholly altered. Rich imagery, emotive language, and relationship tangles that snarl and resolve under the hand of a gifted writer."
Cynthia Ruchti, author of Miles from Where We Started, Afraid of the Light, and Facing the Dawn
"A feisty, frail soul embarks on a complicated pilgrimage, hungry for healing and truth. A talented and timely debut!"
Nicole Deese, Carol Award-winning, bestselling author of A Season to Love
The Author
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Laurie Burin Autumn Lytle
Autumn Lytle identifies with a strange group of humans who enjoy running long distances and writing even longer books. Along with being a forever-recovering anorexic and exercise addict, she is a weirdly good checkers player and finder of four-leaf clovers....
Continue reading about Autumn Lytle