Julie Powell spent a year cooking her way through Julia Child's impossible Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her experiences were recorded in the hilarious bestselling book and film Julie and Julia. But what she did next took even adventurous Julie by surprise.

She trained as a butcher.

Apprenticed at Fleisher's, she cut, chopped, hammered, sliced and cleaved her way through herds of meat; got splattered in gore; grew big muscles; and showed she had what it took to make it as a woman in a man's world. At the same time she embarked on a passionate, red-blooded affair that threatened her marriage, and, at times, her sanity.

Cleaving is a riveting memoir of love, marriage and meat.