Cures for Hunger - by Deni Ellis Bechard (Paperback)

About the Book

"A moving story of rebellion, lost love, criminal daring, and restless searching."--Leonard Gardner, author of Fat City

Book Synopsis

Growing up in rural British Columbia, Deni Ellis Béchard believes his charismatic father is infallible. Wild, unpredictable, even dangerous, André is worshipped by his young son, who believes that his father can do no wrong.

But when Deni's mother leaves his father and decamps with her three children to Virginia, the boy learns of his father's true identity. André Béchard was once a bank robber--and so Deni's imagination is set on fire. Boyish rebelliousness gives way to fantasies of a life of crime. At once attracted and repelled, Deni can't escape the sense that his father's life holds the key to understanding himself, and to making sense of his own passions and longings. Only when he goes off to college, however, does Deni begin to unravel the story of his father's life, eventually finding the Quebecois family that André left behind long ago.

At once a highly unconventional portrait of the artist as a young man and an extraordinary family story, Cures for Hunger is a deeply affecting memoir by one of the most acclaimed young writers in the world today.

Review Quotes

Praise for Cures for Hunger

"You haven't read a story like this one, even if your father was the kind of magnificent scoundrel you only find in Russian novels. Béchard is the rare writer who knows the secret to telling the true story. Just because the end is clear doesn't mean the bets are off."--Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

"Béchard writes that prison taught his father 'the nature of the self, the way it can be shaped and hardened.' As in a great novel, this darkly comic and lyrical memoir demonstrates the shaping of its author, who suffers the wreckage of his father's life, yet manages to salvage all the beauty of its desperate freedoms. Béchard's poetic gifts give voice to the outsiders of society, and make them glow with humanity and love."--Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen

"Béchard has created a moving story of rootlessness, rebellion, lost love, criminal daring, regret, and restless searching. Driven above all by the need to grasp his father's secrets, he has written his narrative in skillful, resonant prose graced with a subtle tone of obsession and longing."--Leonard Gardner, author of Fat City

"This powerful and haunting memoir is a must-read for anyone who has ever struggled to uncover their identity within the shadow of a parent. Written in exquisitely sharp prose, Béchard combs through his attempt to understand his father's mysterious existence with inspiring precision. This book is huge and achingly true."--Claire Bidwell Smith, author of The Rules of Inheritance

"A coming of age story with rare and loving insights into the vulnerable hearts of men and boys--and the women that help shape them."--Huffington Post

"Cures for Hunger is a poignant adventure story with a mystery. . . . But it is also, perhaps even more so, the story of an artist coming of age. Readers will be reminded of James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Béchard's sad and moving memoir is all about secrets and regret and, ultimately, finding peace."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A poignant but rigorously unsentimental account of hard-won maturity."--Kirkus

"A coming-of-age story of lost innocence, violence, and tenderness by a writer obsessed with the man who influenced him the most but was there the least."--Booklist

"Béchard's story is one of personal discovery, and a teasing out of the function of memory: what it keeps, what it loses, and what it saves."--Publishers Weekly

"Cures for Hunger is flush with tenderness. . . . Much more than a memoir of youthful misadventure, though it contains plenty of that. It's also an exploration of the oppression of lineage, of familial duty, wanderlust, and perennial dissatisfaction, and the most American theme of them all: personal reinvention."--Iowa Review

About the Author

Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of the novels Into the Sun and Vandal Love, winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book; Of Bonobos and Men, winner of the 2015 Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism; and Cures for Hunger. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the LA Times, Salon, Pacific Standard, and Foreign Policy, and he has reported from India, Iraq, Colombia, Rwanda, the Congo, and Afghanistan. He lives in New York.