Chapter 25 is titled “The Hunger Wail.”

I have never truly been hungry in my life. I’ve been a day, maybe two without food. I have rarely spent any period in my life when I had insufficient food for any significant length of time. I can only imagine long-term hunger by comparing it to my addiction to alcohol.

There came a time in my alcoholism that I was irrational in my pursuit of drink. If I’d had a drink, very little could stop me from having another, even if that meant hurting family or friends, even if that meant going to jail, even if that meant the alcohol would permanently damage or kill me. Yet that condition, that state of mind, was one that I came to late in my years of drinking. I have been sober for 26 years, and have to try hard to remember what all that felt like. As long as I stay away from alcohol, I have no desire.

Of course, I don’t have the option of avoiding food. We all must eat to live. But imagine having one part of your mind always considering how best to make sure to find enough food to sustain life. I try to imagine what life was like for those in the East End that Jack London found. So many frequently went hungry, and so many more suffered insufficient food on a daily basis. London was perhaps the first fast food city. The streets had many vendors offering foods of all sorts.
Yet, many of the city were so poor, they could not afford to buy food from vendors. Many grew up with bowed legs from rickets, loss of teeth, and bad joints from scurvy, weakened immune systems that left them more open to such infections as typhoid, whooping cough, and scarlet fever.

Again, what would that be like? The more scarce the food and the funds to buy it, the more frequently my mind would be set to the task of working up plans to secure one or both. Think of the energy required—that while having low energy from too little to eat. I’ve known gnawing hunger of a very light variety. What would it be like to have my thoughts consumed by the need as I’d had with alcohol, yet not be able to eventually calm the need with abstinence? What desperate acts might I become willing to commit?

I cannot truly imagine that. I’m lucky to have lived so long without that need pressing on me daily as it must have for so many in London of 1902, just as it is for countless hungry people the world over today.

—Alan M. Clark
Eugene, Oregon

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About Alan M Clark

Author and illustrator, Alan M. Clark grew up in Tennessee in a house full of bones and old medical books. His awards include the World Fantasy Award and four Chesley Awards. He is the author of seventeen books, including ten novels, a lavishly illustrated novella, four collections of fiction, and a nonfiction full-color book of his artwork. Mr. Clark’s company, IFD Publishing, has released 44 titles of various editions, including traditional books, both paperback and hardcover, audio books, and ebooks by such authors as F. Paul Wilson, Elizabeth Engstrom, and Jeremy Robert Johnson. Alan M. Clark and his wife, Melody, live in Oregon. www.alanmclark.com