American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads - Books

Location: Home > Books > Pies > American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads

Similar Items:

•	Humble Pie: Musings on What Lies Beneath the Crust
•	Pie Every Day: Recipes and Slices of Life
•	Feasting on Asphalt: The River Run
•	The Lost Art of Pie Making Made Easy
•	Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)

Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Is there any dish more American than pie? Seeking to determine its unique place in our cultural and culinary life, journalist Pascale Le Draoulec's American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads chronicles the author's cross-country pie hunt. Her search by car--from San Francisco to New York--uncovers every native pie variety, from Montana huckleberry to Pennsylvania shoofly; it also reveals, perhaps predictably, an America of towns with 60 churches for 2,500 inhabitants and "white-haired women with calloused rolling pin palms," a breed sadly in decline, as is pie making, which takes time we don't seem to have. Still, pie makers like Oklahoma's Leoda Mueller (coconut cream) and Minnesota's Lola Nebel (raspberry pear) are out there, and for many of them fixing pies remains a link to the past, present, and self. Le Draoulec's journey is also a personal one. Besides learning that we're a land that often likes its pie crusts purchased pre-made, or prepared with butter-flavored Crisco (how quickly we embrace industrial foods!), Le Draoulec completes a pie-bracketed journey of her own, from an unsettled West Coast life to domesticity and an impending marriage in the East. There she plans to bake a marriage pie, "huckleberry and peach, like the one [she] loved at the Spruce Cafe in Montana." If Le Draoulec doesn't usually manage to get under her characters' skin, and if her narrative lacks conclusiveness, she nonetheless provides an arresting look at an iconic food whose place is both entrenched and precarious. The book includes photos and 25 recipes from the pie makers, such as Mildred Snook's Sour Cream Raisin Pie, Bufford's Dad's Buttermilk Pie, and Mamma Millsap's Open-Faced Apple Pie. --Arthur Boehm

Product Description
You know you're going on a quest for pie, but you may find something else entirely. Be prepared.

These were the prophetic words uttered to Pascale Le Draoulec as she began her cross-country journey. When offered a job in New York, she chose to drive rather than fly into her new life. As a food writer, she decided to turn an ordinary move into a culinary quest. She chose pie as her grail and guide, because, after all, what's more American than pie?

Crossing class and color lines, and spanning the nation (from Montana Huckleberry to Pennsylvania Shoo-Fly), pie -- real, homemade pie -- has meaning for all of us. But in today's treadmill take-out world, our fast-food nation, does pie still have a place? As a first-generation American raised by two quintessentially French parents, Le Draoulec knew much more about tartes than pies, but as she made her way across the United States, she discovered that mentioning homemade pie to anyone made faces soften, shoulders sigh, and memories come wafting back; that everyone she met had a fond memory of pie.

Le Draoulec and Betty the Volvo (her trusty automotive sidekick) meandered from town to town, meeting the famous and sometimes infamous pie makers in each place, like the little old ladies of Wasta, South Dakota (pop. 70), who had been baking pies from scratch to serve, and sell, on Election Day. They found themselves going head to head with state officials when South Dakota outlawed the sale of food at elections.

Le Draoulec's story, based on her adventure serialized in the Gannett newspapers, will entertain and move readers as she seeks to answer the question of the place of pie in today's world.

Customer Reviews: Read 26 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

A Gastronomic Journey Across America November 20, 2006
Pascale Le Draoulec a West Coast food editor who has never tasted American pie has taken a job on the East Coast. She decides drive from California to the new job in Connecticut and use the trip to experience American pies. Le Draoulec tells of adventures and scenery and people she meets along the way. And she also describes regional pie favorites. Several recipes are included.

This is a must read for someone craving light reading and a good slice of pie!

5 out of 5 stars

Inspirational August 30, 2006
I could not put this down. I too can relate to moving from the west to the east therefore much of the allure of this book was reading about all the places I have been. The stories are charming. Wonderful, easy read.

5 out of 5 stars

Yummy! Loved It!! June 23, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

I got this book at a library sale and had no idea what a treat I was in for. Great stories mixed with fun pie recipies. It's the type of book you can "dip into" when you want, or read it all in one sitting. I did make a great pie after reading this; guess I was inspired. Great gift as well; young and old...bakers and non-bakers will appreciate the easy to read narrative and tales from around the States.

1 out of 5 stars

EAT Pie, don't READ about it! November 27, 2005
1 out of 7 found this review helpful

...or at least don't read THIS book about it. What a mess. This is one of the most nastily-written books that I can think of, and how can you be nasty when writing about something as delicious as PIE? I agree with the other reviewer who didn't dare donate this book to the charity book sale! Directly into the trash bin!

3 out of 5 stars

Thelma and Louise go for pie November 9, 2004
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

This books combines the perspectives of the roadtrip, the female "buddy adventure," and a food book all in one, as author Le Draoulec and two different female friends go on two different roadtrips to explore the world of pie. In her search for pie, the author encounters interesting characters and snapshots of America and Americana.

A downside is that the author's engagement is somewhat... superficial. By her own admission, her choosing of pie as the theme for her roadtrip is arbitrary. As a journalist always looking for a story, she is constantly on the lookout for certain tidbits, soundbites, and events of interest, and this renders a certain self-consciouness to the proceedings.

For example: In Memphis, an old man mentions a pie stop that local people go to after church: "I was glad he brought church up," the writer says, "because Kris and I had a hankering for some live, soul-searing spirituals." She goes on to describe their morning adventure as two 30-something white yuppie women in an all-black southern church. How phony, opportunistic, whitebread and contrived can you get? That, and a few too many predictable self-deprecatory "to hell with our waistlines -- we're eating more pie" jokes of the "Cathy" comicstrip sensibility -- wears thin after awhile.

Some of those aspects may be pet peeves on my part. But a very real problem with the book is a significant loss of momentum between sections (between her first and second pie trips) that makes it read almost like two different books.

All that said, this is a fun and entertaining book. It will make you excited about pie, and for cooks there are probably some great recipes. Despite some superficiality, there are some compassionate and interesting portraits of the people they encounter. And in the end, the author digs a bit deeper into herself, and finally connects with her subject matter. I found the concluding two pages to be moving and memorable.

Good Grape Wine Company