"Rachel Rubenstein-Goldblatt is a nice Jewish girl with a shameful secret: she loves Christmas. For a decade she's hidden her career as a Christmas romance novelist from her family. Her talent has made her a bestseller even as her chronic illness has always kept the kind of love she writes about out of reach. But when her diversity-conscious publisher insists she write a Hanukkah romance, her well of inspiration suddenly runs dry. Hanukkah's not magical....

"For the past six years, Whitney Dafoe has been confined to a bedroom in the back of his parents' home, unable to walk, to eat, to speak. The sound of music causes him pain. At one point, the formerly healthy, young, freelance photographer, faced starvation as his 6'3" frame withered to 115 pounds. In desperation, Whitney and his parents went from one specialist to another, and still no answers. Then, finally, a diagnosis: the mysterious disease myalgic...

"Ill Feelings blends memoir, medical history, biography, and literary nonfiction to uncover author Alice Hattrick's and their mother's medically unexplained chronic illnesses"--

"A literary, historical exploration about the way in which our industrialized lives have made us sick--from diarist Alice James and the 19th century neuraesthenics to current day chronic and stress-related illnesses--that seeks to answer the question who gets sick, and why?"--