"Milkweed and Honey Cake is an essay collection that weaves personal stories with reflections on ritual, in everyday life and in extraordinary times. Using experiences, objects, and practices, Horwitz explores the ways rituals might provide solace, celebration, and transition. Rather than a chronology, the essays create a collage of memories, linked by themes. Chapters are short. Some are impressionistic and some narrative, but all raise questions about searching for and creating meaning, whether informed by religion or not. The essays are intended to inspire and provoke rather than prescribe. Through these stories and vignettes, the essays examine the limits of ritual: the extent to which we can share each other's practices or create new ones, and the times when rituals fall short"--