Crackpot (Penguin Modern Classics Edition)

Hoda is earthy, bawdy, vulnerable, big-hearted, and the daughter of an impoverished Jewish couple who emigrated from Russia to Canada to escape persecution. Growing up in a low-income area of Winnipeg, she transitions form a tumultuous childhood to a life of prostitution. In the neighborhood, she is considered a crackpot and worse; she experiences cruelty and bigotry but her quest for love, which brings hope out of humiliation, is one of the most memorable in modern fiction.