Her characters, often teenagers, have figured out how to exist in a punishing world that offers none of the rewards available to those who finish school and have middle class ambitions. Davis creates fictive voices that pulse with reality, situations that are fascinating, yet often depressing. Other than Tom and a few empathetic others, why do we care about any of these low-lifes in Our Daily Bread? Why do we pity these unlikeable people? Why do we keep reading about them? Because we are fascinated by those who live among us but are so unlike ourselves. When his common-law-wife Patty abandons the family, he keeps on, maintaining his house and two children. Tom, unlike the Erskines who earn their living from meth labs, is a straight arrow who cares deeply about his family and takes hourly paid jobs to provide for them. “He’d beat his wife, Meg, so bad she had convulsions and when his son, Billy, didn’t have a black eye, he had a split lip or another missing tooth.”īut the heart of the novel, the really pitiable story, is about the Evans family: father Tom, brother Bobby and daughter Ivy. Here is a description of the cruelty of Uncle Ray, not a very big man but well known for his vicious temper. Filthy, poorly educated, poorly nourished, victims of incest and societal prejudice, the Erskines even hate themselves.
Tangentially Davis’s fictional plot focuses on the Erskine family who lives on North Mountain. Davis said she was influenced by the 1998, non-fiction book On South Mountain: The Dark Secrets of the Goler Clan by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths. Our Daily Bread is inspired by a real life Nova Scotia hillbilly clan, a marginalized, mentally-addled, sexually confused family.
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