"If Drugs Could Talk: In 'Delicious Foods' They Do"

"In the book Delicious Foods Hannaham tells that story. Darlene, a mother and widow, is held captive on a farm and is forced to labor for the food, lodging and drugs provided to her by the "Delicious Foods" company. Her son, Eddie, is missing both hands — and yet we meet him in Chapter 1, driving, escaping actually, in the middle of the night. After he lands safely in St. Cloud, Minn., he eventually becomes a cheerful and popular handyman with no hands that everyone knows — but no one really knows.

Eddie's the type of character who might have just been a background character in another story. "You wouldn't know the backstory," Hannaham says. Starting the novel "backwards," he explains, was a way of easing readers into disturbing material. The novel explores what slavery would look like in modern America"

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/13/391914914/if-drugs-could-talk-in-delicious-foods-they-do