At once an extraordinary family story and a highly unconventional portrait of the artist as a young man, this singular, deeply affecting memoir, is about Bechard’s quest to uncover his father’s past as a bank robber and the highs of living.
Deni Y. Béchard was born in British Columbia to a loving and health-conscious American mother and a French-Canadian father with a penchant for crime and storytelling. He grew up in primarily in B.C. and Virginia, but an insatiable drive for travel and experience led him to roam widely across North America. CURES FOR HUNGER focuses on the experiences and effects of his nomadic childhood.
Béchard’s first novel, VANDAL LOVE, (Doubleday Canada, 2006) won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the best first book in the entire British Commonwealth. He has been a fellow at MacDowell, Jentel, the Edward Albee Foundation, Ledig House, the Anderson Center, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. His articles, stories and translations have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers, among them the National Post, the Harvard Review and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He has reported from Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, and has lived in over thirty countries. When not traveling, he divides his time between Tokyo, Cambridge, and Montréal. CURES FOR HUNGER and VANDAL LOVE are his first—and simultaneous—book-length publications in the United States.
“Where did such longings reside in us, passed on through blood or stories? It seemed to me then, hearing his words, that a father’s life is a boy’s first story.” —from Cures for Hunger
At once an extraordinary family story and a highly unconventional portrait of the artist as a young man, Cures for Hunger is a singular, deeply affecting memoir, by one of the most acclaimed young writers in the world today.
“In Cures for Hunger, Deni Y. Bechard 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
