Beyond Anorexia is a sociological exploration of how people recover from what medicine labels as "eating disorders," and the first book to focus exclusively on recovery. Beginning with her own personal story, and drawing on conversations with over thirty other former sufferers, Catherine Garrett demonstrates the fundamental importance of narrative to social theory and to healing. Her central claim is that recovery is a "spiritual" experience (not necessarily a religious one), reconnecting the self with body, nature and society. As such it is the key to fully understanding anorexia.