“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca. The death of Béchard’s father catalyzes his commitment to be a writer and to tell André’s story. In fact, Béchard hammered out the first draft of what would eventually become Cures For Hunger in two weeks, just three months after his father’s suicide. “It was a story I had to write for myself,” he says. Seventeen years of rewriting followed. “I realized how the repeated telling of any story separates it from the original events and gives it a life of its own.”

Given Béchard’s nomadic nature, it is fitting that he is on the road in New York City when I catch up with him to chat by phone. Currently, the thirty- six-year-old author is on tour, promoting both Cures For Hunger and his Commonwealth Prize-winning debut novel, Vandal Love, which are being released simultaneously in the United States by Milkweed Editions, a first- rate independent, mid-sized press.

When asked what was the toughest part of writing his memoir, Béchard says, “Seeing the joy. The material was pretty dark, pretty grim.” The book started out as a novel, and only after a decade of revision did he decide to rewrite it as a memoir.

Growing up in rural British Columbia, Deni idolizes his Dad, his stories, his old “Indian” tricks, and his perilous adventures. A favourite: racing trains, where his father piles the kids into his green truck and outstrips a train, only to pull onto the crossing, as warning lights flash and bells ring. Then he turns off the ignition: Deni and his brother spot the oncoming train and scream. Just in time, Dad twists the key and lurches onto the road.

When he is with his father, Deni feels “more alive, charged … with sudden, mysterious joy.” He loves his father’s smell, pine sap and coffee, gasoline and sweat; he even loves his foul mouth and short, passionate temper. Deni is sure they are alike, though he knows little of his father’s family, life, and past.

While his Dad encourages him to fight and cuss, his mother urges him to find his true purpose. Interestingly, she makes Deni study in French, though his father, originally from Gaspésie, rarely uses his mother tongue.

Deni’s mother has her own quirks: she hates Christians and processed food with equal fervour; attends a psychic church; and believes in meditation, levitation, teleporting, and spirit guides. While all the other kids come to school with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cookies, Deni and his siblings get lettuce and tomato on dark crumbly bread and flat, hard cookies that look like “wet mud thrown at a wall.” His mother is also a talented artist, though sadly, she relinquishes this dream.

When Deni is in fifth grade, his parents’ acrimonious marriage falls apart. His Mom flees with all three kids to a trailer park in Virginia. Not only does Deni miss his Dad, but he also pines for the woods and streams, the mountains and valleys of his B.C. home. For the first time, he experiences hunger, subsisting on ramen noodles. Before the move, their Dad managed to keep spaghetti and meaty soups on the table through his fish stores and Christmas tree sales. Now, hunger stalks Deni “like a school bully. Hunger slept on my belly, like a hot cat. Hunger barked me into a panic like a vicious neighbor’s dog.”