Another book with a great hook-Right off the bat we meet Eddie, a young African American who has been terribly injured resulting in the loss of both his hands. The novel backtracks as to how this happened along with a first person narrative of an invisible drug dealer that ruins the life of Eddie's mother Darlene. The resolution is beautifully developed but the journey getting there is way too long. An editor should have had the author trim a good junk of the book. ( )

still one of my favs

This book is a tough one to review in an impartial fair way, so I'm going to just put my biases right out there, and people can criticize me about them.

The story opens with a bang. A man, Eddie, is driving a stolen Suburu north, and he has no hands - - just bloody stumps. It's a great opening. Who couldn't wonder about this man and what happened to him?

Eddie turns out to be the son of a woman, Darlene. Darlene unfortunately is a prostitute and crack cocaine user who gets picked up and ferreted away to farm in Louisiana. This farm is under the auspices of Delicious Foods, and essentially treats its workers like indentured servants . . .one step above slaves . . .a very small step.

The story revolves around Eddie and Darlene primarily and is narrated from their points of view, but there is another narrator, Scotty. Scotty is in fact crack cocaine. Yes, crack cocaine is character. This actually works out a little better than it sounds like it would. I will give the author a nod and say it was fresh. The whole plot line is very original so kudos to him on that.

Here's what really bothered me. The author is African American. And I think he was, in part, trying to show the damage from slavery in a modern day setting. Or trying to skewer the whole migrant worker situation. Or attempting to show why people are incapable of extricating themselves from difficult situations.

But frankly, I just felt he portrayed black people in a terrible light. They were weak, easily manipulated, derailed by the least little challenge, addicted to drugs. They are being held as prisoners, and when someone escapes, he doesn't call the police. In fact over and over again, no one contacts the police. I understand that there is a lot of suspicion of the police in the black community, and that was portrayed in the book, but there were heinous crimes going on.

So then, I think to myself, well white people write about other white people and portray them in terrible ways. Why can't an African American author do the same? But I do think if a white author wrote this exact same book, people would say it was racist. When Scotty talks it's in some kind of urban dialect. The whole thing just really turned me off. None of the characters was especially admirable except Darlene's husband (who is a minor player in this whole drama). Darlene gave a bad name to all women, and yet somehow, I think the author felt like he had justified her behaviors. I just couldn't see it. I didn't find her to be sympathetic.

The story itself had some extremely dramatic moments, but it also had a lot of chapters that felt like filler. When Scotty narrated, I just felt very detached from the story. I admired how the author articulated what a drug might say if a drug was a person, but all in all, that didn't really propel the story forward.

So while critics may love this one, I just couldn't. It just showed the worst side of humanity with little to redeem it. ( )

SEASON THREE OF THE ABC SERIES AMERICAN CRIME PREMIERED ON MARCH 12. THIS SEASON SHINES A SPOTLIGHT ON INDENTURED SERVITUDE, ESSENTIALLY SLAVERY, IN THE U.S. AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. AND THAT IS THE THEME OF THIS VERY GOOD NOVEL THAT APPEARED IN 2016. AS THE OPENING PARAGRAPH OF THE REVIEW ILLUSTRATES, AGRICULTURAL SLAVERY DOES EXIST IN THE U.S. TODAY.

Delicious Foods

By James Hannaham

Every once in a while when sitting down to dinner, perhaps you wonder idly where your veggies and fruits come from, maybe even who grows and picks them for you. Even under the best of circumstances picking and packing crops is hard work. But who would believe slave laborers pick and pack our food? Overworked, underpaid, yes, but not virtual slaves, right?

Yet, while not the norm, slave labor does exist in the USA. Don’t believe it? Google Jewel Goodman, Tampa Bay Times, and read about near slavery of the type James Hannaham uses as a focal point of his powerful and fast-paced novel of people in desperate poverty and in the throes of crack cocaine addiction. As the story reports, “Goodman is one of more than 1,000 slaves who have gained freedom in Florida since 1997.” The thrust being: Delicious Foods is less the product of wild imagination than even wilder and sadder reality for too many.

We meet Eddie in flight, on his way to Minnesota, driving a car, steering with his forehead and arms, as where once he had hands, now are phantoms and bloody stumps. We see how he overcomes and establishes himself as the “Handyman Without Hands,” and then how his predicament came about.

Scotty tells the bulk of the sorry. He, or it, turns out to be quite a novel narrative device, for readers will be hard pressed to think of a novel narrated by crack cocaine. It’s through his smokey, quelling, and even at times humorous vernacular that readers learn about Darlene, Eddie’s mother.

Darlene, once a happy college girl, wife of a college basketball star and later civil rights activist, has been reduced, through guilt and hopeless, to a street hooker, answering to the siren call of escapism preached by Scotty. Fleeing her past, enraptured by her addiction, she falls prey to the promises of a better life offered by representatives of Delicious Foods. Once in their grasp, they encumber and shackle her, from the very first moments, in financial servitude.

For the majority of time, the novel centers on Darlene’s years at Delicious Foods. She lives in deplorably filthy conditions, subsists on what most would regard as not even good enough to be garbage, works long, hard hours under the harshest conditions and abusive supervision, torments herself over her false belief she caused the death of her husband, longs for her son Eddie, dreams of escaping, and mellows all her emotional and physical suffering into the background with the help of her companion, the always available Scotty. It’s her entire servitude to Delicious Foods that readers might think fiction but which, to some degree, is reality for many, and sets you to wondering, “How much pain is in the produce section of the supermarket?”

The story reconnects with Eddie, a young teen, when he finds his mother and ends up working years beside her on the farm. It’s only his intrepidness, combined with a handful of other determined characters, and a newsman with a nose for exposé, that springs them free of Delicious Foods’ grasp, but at the cost of Eddie’s hands and his relationship with his mother.

However, readers should not fear a grim ending, as Hannaham brings his tale to a close on a note of hope and redemption regarding Darlene and Eddie, though for some readers this may push the bounds of credulity understanding the tight clutch of Scotty. ( )

SEASON THREE OF THE ABC SERIES AMERICAN CRIME PREMIERED ON MARCH 12. THIS SEASON SHINES A SPOTLIGHT ON INDENTURED SERVITUDE, ESSENTIALLY SLAVERY, IN THE U.S. AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. AND THAT IS THE THEME OF THIS VERY GOOD NOVEL THAT APPEARED IN 2016. AS THE OPENING PARAGRAPH OF THE REVIEW ILLUSTRATES, AGRICULTURAL SLAVERY DOES EXIST IN THE U.S. TODAY.

Delicious Foods

By James Hannaham

Every once in a while when sitting down to dinner, perhaps you wonder idly where your veggies and fruits come from, maybe even who grows and picks them for you. Even under the best of circumstances picking and packing crops is hard work. But who would believe slave laborers pick and pack our food? Overworked, underpaid, yes, but not virtual slaves, right?

Yet, while not the norm, slave labor does exist in the USA. Don’t believe it? Google Jewel Goodman, Tampa Bay Times, and read about near slavery of the type James Hannaham uses as a focal point of his powerful and fast-paced novel of people in desperate poverty and in the throes of crack cocaine addiction. As the story reports, “Goodman is one of more than 1,000 slaves who have gained freedom in Florida since 1997.” The thrust being: Delicious Foods is less the product of wild imagination than even wilder and sadder reality for too many.

We meet Eddie in flight, on his way to Minnesota, driving a car, steering with his forehead and arms, as where once he had hands, now are phantoms and bloody stumps. We see how he overcomes and establishes himself as the “Handyman Without Hands,” and then how his predicament came about.

Scotty tells the bulk of the sorry. He, or it, turns out to be quite a novel narrative device, for readers will be hard pressed to think of a novel narrated by crack cocaine. It’s through his smokey, quelling, and even at times humorous vernacular that readers learn about Darlene, Eddie’s mother.

Darlene, once a happy college girl, wife of a college basketball star and later civil rights activist, has been reduced, through guilt and hopeless, to a street hooker, answering to the siren call of escapism preached by Scotty. Fleeing her past, enraptured by her addiction, she falls prey to the promises of a better life offered by representatives of Delicious Foods. Once in their grasp, they encumber and shackle her, from the very first moments, in financial servitude.

For the majority of time, the novel centers on Darlene’s years at Delicious Foods. She lives in deplorably filthy conditions, subsists on what most would regard as not even good enough to be garbage, works long, hard hours under the harshest conditions and abusive supervision, torments herself over her false belief she caused the death of her husband, longs for her son Eddie, dreams of escaping, and mellows all her emotional and physical suffering into the background with the help of her companion, the always available Scotty. It’s her entire servitude to Delicious Foods that readers might think fiction but which, to some degree, is reality for many, and sets you to wondering, “How much pain is in the produce section of the supermarket?”

The story reconnects with Eddie, a young teen, when he finds his mother and ends up working years beside her on the farm. It’s only his intrepidness, combined with a handful of other determined characters, and a newsman with a nose for exposé, that springs them free of Delicious Foods’ grasp, but at the cost of Eddie’s hands and his relationship with his mother.

However, readers should not fear a grim ending, as Hannaham brings his tale to a close on a note of hope and redemption regarding Darlene and Eddie, though for some readers this may push the bounds of credulity understanding the tight clutch of Scotty. ( )