Francesca Dietrich

Francesca is the daughter of Hal and Grace and the younger sister of Gregg and Susanna. Throughout her life she has given over center stage to Susanna, and at fifteen, her feelings of not belonging manifest as anorexia. Francesca, longing for a career in dance, comes to crave the approval of her ballet teacher above all else. She gives up her free time for extra classes and practice and gives up food in an effort to be thinner, as her teacher indicates is necessary. Francesca soon relates the need to be thinner with success and spends all her time on countless rituals, including cutting food into tiny pieces and moving them around on her plate so that it appears she's eaten but in truth is only consuming a hundred or so calories a day.

She begins calling herself Kessa and relates Francesca to the "fat" version of...