A Hunger in the Heart has been presented for several awards for First Novel: The Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction; American Book Award Before Columbus Foundation; The Ernest Hemingway/Pen Award; 2014 Pen/Faulkner Award; and CALA (Catholic Arts and Letters Award)
It is 1955 Florida, and Kaye Park Hinckley’s debut novel, A Hunger in the Heart, brings it alive with memorable flawed characters who all desire something. Sarah Neal longs for her husband, Putt, a WWII hero with a traumatic brain injury, to be like he was before the war. Because he can’t be, she fills her longing with whiskey. Coleman, their son, needs his father and wants his mother’s love and affection. C.P., the B.O.S.S. of Gator Town, Florida, and Putt’s dad and Coleman’s grandfather, wants everything to be normal, and he yearns for his dead wife’s forgiveness.
They all must learn how to live through tragedy and treachery when Putt is accused of a heinous crime. Fig, the gardener, with commonsense wisdom explains to Coleman, “. . . a hero makes a choice to put somebody else ahead of himself,” and Anna, Coleman’s first love, teaches him the most valuable lesson of all.
This is a story, ultimately, of hope and love: How we find it and thrive in even the darkest circumstances.
The "Two Thousand Yard Stare" of WWII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq3r42Z7KC8
And Today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEAJnGhyTCs
WELCOME TO GATOR TOWN
SEE 'EM.
FEED 'EM.
AND LIVE TO TALK ABOUT IT!
Inside the fold of the newspaper was the gun. The boy pointed it at the mirror, like he had before, but this time, instead of rewrapping it, he set it into the pocket of the army jacket, then pushed the wheelbarrow up the yard.
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PRAISE:
"Kaye Park Hinckley's novel, A Hunger in the Heart, is a story of hope, forgiveness, and redemption. It's a great read in the tradition of southern fiction."
Winston Groom, Author of Forrest Gump and Shiloh, 1862
"Kaye Park Hinckley is a writer with a sensitive ear and a keenly developed sympathy for her characters. Her debut novel, A Hunger in the Heart, marks the beginning of a promising career in the world of fiction.
Mark Childress, author of Georgia Bottoms and Crazy in Alabama
"In the tradition of Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, & Walker Percy, A Hunger in the Heart by Kaye Park Hinckley brings alive the south and the search for meaning and forgiveness."
Peter Mongeau, Publisher, Tuscany Press
Hinckley's characters are complicated. They've done horrible things, witnessed horrible things, been
the victims of horrible things, yet they continue rising each morning and putting one foot in front of the other. They fulfill their obligations to each other while these horrible things gnaw at them
from the inside out. Hinckley deftly presents the repulsiveness of her character's actions, while also revealing her characters' drive toward love. Fully developed plots and well-rounded
characters. --Lake Oconee Living
The short stories in Birds of a Feather are richly imagined tales full of finely drawn characters who demonstrate how people estranged from faith can bumble through life so distracted by worldly horrors and delights, so full of themselves, that they don't even notice faint nudges of grace that stir in their souls or recognize subtle emanations of the holy that abound in the world around them.--The Catholic World Report
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