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Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul is a coming-of-age memoir that chronicles a young girl's journey through abuse and impoverishment. The effusive narration descends into the depths of personal and sexual degradation, perpetual hunger for food, safety and survival. While moving through gritty exposés of poverty, abuse, and starvation, Crave renders a continuing search for sustenance that simply will not die.


Laurie Jean is most recognizable through her voice. Lyrical and august, yet strangely intimate, her lucid memory for the texture of daily existence weaves the reader into the fabric of the story. We discover that the most slender threads bind the strongest. 

It is no surprise this memoir is a narrative about a victim who becomes a survivor. Laurie Jean  is assertive, motivational, and unafraid to reach her target audience: women, African Americans, high-school students, college students, survivors of physical and sexual abuse, veterans, people raised by single parents, and folks who are living in or have lived through impoverishment.

  • NATHAN MCCALL

    Make Me Wanna Holla 

    Cannady has delivered a poignant coming-of-age tale that reveals the ... pain and struggle often shuffled ... from one family generation to the next. In sometimes humorous, often wrenching detail, this book chronicles a young girl's determined search for self. A fascinating read.

  • Tayari Jones

     American Marriage & Kin

    Crave: A Sojourn of a Hungry Soul is a soul-searing memoir that marks the arrival of an unforgettable new voice.  Brave, honest, and beautiful, this is a story about facing the truth and daring to love your way through to the other side.

  • Kirkus Reviews

    Throughout this at-times painful narrative, the author also celebrates the strength of her bonds among the members of her family and especially with her mother. These bonds offered her the sustenance she needed to become a woman whose hunger to escape the cycle of abuse eventually trumped dysfunction and chaos and put her on a road to a better life.

     

    A bold, honest, and courageous memoir.

  • RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ

    Butterfly Boy 

    What an extraordinary memoir! Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul is Laurie Jean Cannady's intense yet inspiring story of overcoming the terrors and traumas that befall a young black woman on her hard-won path to selfhood and self-love. Daughter to a woman who "wore the same pain" of heartaches and history of abusive relationships, Cannady's triumph is in recognizing that she "still had strength to hold [herself] together while so broken." The light at the end of this fierce and uncompromising book is nourishment to the spirit.

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