The Hard Way

Literary Nonfiction. Memoir. In an age when much food and travel writing has become the flashy lifestyle musings of the rich, William Hastings has given us the earnest and energetic memoir of a man who begins his travels poor, and finishes with only a few bucks, but who along the way learns the pure, sensual, joy of cooking and eating. THE HARD WAY is the memoir of a world wanderer with an enormous sensual appetite, learning to make onion soup when all he has to his name is an onion, and it follows him through a hardscrabble existence in the Virgin Islands, eating out of dumpsters until natives show him how to cook coconut over an open fire. Then we're off to the Middle East where he learns the staunch process and tradition of making the perfect coffee. Here is an encounter with people, cultures, and a full sense of being alive. Hastings joins the tradition of the wanderers of literature, such as Blaise Cendrars, Laurie Lee, and Eric Newby.