Book Description

The Starved Senses is a powerful and disturbing story from a witness to the worst mass shooting in San Francisco's history: the 101 California Street Massacre. It follows three outsiders across two weeks in the summer of 1993: John, a struggling businessman with a long-simmering grudge; Rachel, a San Francisco legal assistant wandering in solitude; and Emmett, a bullied Bay Area teenager. Although they never meet, they are forever connected by a horrific act of violence, each one driven by an inner starvation and ultimately forced to choose between life and death. Are they failures? Are they insane? Or are they the products of a desperate, soul-consuming culture where meaningful human contact can seem like an impossible dream? In its exploration of the forces that disconnect people from one another, from themselves, and from life itself, The Starved Senses is an indictment of humanity's fatal flaw - the predatory desire for cruelty without consequences. Charisse Goodman is a graduate of California State University. A long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she is also the author of the 1995 nonfiction book, The Invisible Woman: Confronting Weight Prejudice In America.