Hungry Hills

by George Ryga

A novel of a young man revisiting the stony landscape of the Alberta foothills where he grew up.

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Travis Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

I live a couple miles from where Ryga's family homesteaded, so the descriptions of the land and its people in this novel were evocative for me. I loved the dialogue and the dialect, full of slangs and swears that are hilarious but also charged in the right moments. I mean, Snit Mandolin saying the preacher and the shopkeeper can go fuck themselves was an honest and almost certainly controversial statement in the early '60s, when this book was published. That's but one example.

If you want to know what life was like north of the big elbow in the Athabasca River circa the 1950s (or thereabouts), with glimpses of life in Edmonton, this is an accurate portrayal. I loved this story and the way its told, I loved the characters, and I crushed all 139 pages in a single sitting. Highly recommended!

Now to read every other novel Ryga wrote...

[Tammy Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

A straight forward telling of the struggle of making a life of farming in remote northern AB in the 1950's, how our roots draw us home, and the hold they have, despite the odds of a better life elsewhere. I stumbled across this little known small publication of a local author, which I always find more rewarding than the New York Bestsellers.