Hungry for the World
A Memoir
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her first book, the 1997 Pulitzer finalist In the Wilderness, which is reprised in the first 70 pages of this memoir, Barnes chronicled her idyllic childhood in Idaho's forest country and her special joy and communion with her father in tracking game. Strict adherents to a charismatic evangelical religion, her family accepted without question Barnes's father's decision, taken after locking himself in the root cellar to fast and praying for divine guidance, to leave his job as a logger and move into the mill town of Lewiston in the spring of 1970. Effectively ending Barnes's easy companionship with her father, the move marked the beginning of her adolescence and her entry into a different world, where it seemed sin was everywhere. Barnes found her parents' restrictions unjust and hypocritical, and rebelled with friends who smoked, drank and experimented with sex. When her father refused her permission to attend the senior prom, she struck out on her own with her few belongings, most notably the Winchester 30.06 gun that she treasured as a reminder of happier times with her father. Working as a bank teller, she met an intriguing older man. Although he was enigmatic and withholding, David shared her love of the outdoors and flattered her with his attention. Their story is the focus of this well-crafted memoir, as Barnes explores the complicities of an abusive relationship that eerily echoes the patriarchal domination of family and church she sought to escape. Whether she is recreating the drama of her struggles or conjuring the Idaho wilderness in lyrical passages, Barnes writes beautifully.
