Hungry for the World - by Kim Barnes (Paperback)

About the Book

On the day of her high school graduation, the author decided she could no longer abide the patriarchal domination of family and church. After a disagreement with her father, she gathered her few belongings and struck out on her own. Here, she tells a classic story of her search for knowledge and its consequences.

Book Synopsis

Fans of Educated by Tara Westover are sure to fall for this "beautifully written" narrative (The New York Times Book Review) of self-discovery and personal triumph from the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated memoir In the Wilderness.

Here is the story of how an intelligent and passionate young woman, yearning for an understanding of the world beyond her insular family life, found her way.

On the day of her 1976 high school graduation in Lewiston, Idaho, Kim Barnes decided she could no longer abide the patriarchal domination of family and church. After a disagreement with her father-a logger and fervent adherent to the Pentecostal Christian faith-she gathered her few belongings and struck out on her own. She had no skills and no funds, but she had the courage and psychological sturdiness to make her way, and to eventually survive the influence of a man whose dominance was of a different and more menacing sort. Hungry for the World is a classic story of the search for knowledge and its consequences, both dire and beautiful.

Review Quotes

"Beautifully written ... We read her story and bleed for her." --The New York Times Book Review

"It is refreshing to read such a moving story of human regeneration." --Fort Worth Star Telegram

About the Author

KIM BARNES is the author of the novel Finding Caruso and two memoirs, In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country--a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize--and Hungry for the World. She is coeditor with Mary Clearman Blew of Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers, and with Claire Davis of Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, MORE magazine, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.