The Taste of Hunger

A family saga about Ukrainian immigrants in the early 20th century, the power of desire, Baba Yaga fairytales, and a moment that changes everything. In Saskatchewan in the late 1920s, a fifteen-year-old Ukrainian immigrant named Olena is forced into marriage with Taras, a man twice her age, who wants her even though she has refused him. Stuck in a hardscrabble life and with a husband she despises, fiercely determined Olena sets off a chain of events that pulls everyone around them, including their two daughters, into a vortex of simmering bitterness and anger -- and a moment that leaves aftershocks in its wake for years to come. Barbara Joan Scott has masterfully crafted a novel about our deepest desires and the lengths we'll go to chase our most insatiable needs. The Taste of Hunger explores the pulls of family, the justification of anger, and the possibility of redemption.