Delicious Foods — James Hannaham

Darlene, once an exemplary wife and a loving mother, finds herself devastated by the unforeseen death of her husband. Unable to cope with her grief, she turns to drugs. Unbeknownst to her eleven-year-old son Eddie, Darlene has been lured away to a remote farm with false promises of a good job by a shady company named Delicious Foods, where she is held captive while she works the land to pay off alleged debts.

Through Darlene’s haunted struggle to reunite with Eddie, through the efforts of both to triumph over those who would enslave them, and through the irreverent and mischievous voice of the drug that narrates Darlene’s travails, Hannaham’s daring prose infuses this harrowing experience with compassion and humour. Along the way we experience a tale at once contemporary and historical that wrestles with timeless questions of love and freedom, forgiveness and redemption, tenacity and the will to survive.