Delicious Foods

From its wild-eyed open with a young Eddie driving a stolen Subaru, blood soaked towels where his hands should be, to Hannaham's choice to have crack cocaine narrate much of the book, this book subverts expectation. We're in the midst of a “how-dunnit” as we go back years to meet Eddie's mother turning tricks and looking for her next hit and then years earlier to her in college on a path to build a life with the man who will become her husband.

You can imbue the story with a host of themes — as allegory or expose but it's still at its heart a fantastically compelling read.

If I could have recorded my emotions while reading this they would be:
interested
charmed
enthralled
horrified
angry
sickened
gut punched
empathetic
heart broken
suspicious
bored
horrified again
angry
very, very angry
hopeful

I made two mistakes with this book. First, I thought it was a modern day fairy tale and I went into it expecting to be horrified and charmed and saddened with loss. Then, I made mistake number two and read the reviews and found out this is based on real events. The horrified level went up, up, up.
It also elevated the importance of this story in my mind by ten-fold. This is a difficult read, this is a moving read, this is a good read.
The writing is excellent and I will admit there were some parts in which there was some poetic waxing and my reader brain screamed, “Who cares! Get back to the story at the farm!”
Delicious Foods is not a fairy tale, no matter what Scotty might have you think.