“A rich, satisfying account of one woman’s cross-country search for the age-old dessert.” —  Entertainment Weekly An engaging and quirky travelogue, cultural and personal excursion, and adventure-cookbook that brings back from the highways and back roads a homemade slice of America Crossing class and color lines, and spanning the nation (Montana has its huckleberry, Pennsylvania its shoofly, and Mississippi its sweet potato), 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 she traveled across the United States in an old Volvo named Betty, Pascale Le Draoulec discovered how merely mentioning homemade pie to strangers made faces soften, shoulders relax, and memories come wafting back. Rambling from town to town with Le Draoulec, you'll meet the famous, and sometimes infamous, pie makers who share their stories and recipes, and find out how a quest for pie can lead to something else entirely. 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 Café 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 As satisfying as a slice of homemade pie, Le Draoulec's cross-country journeys in search of "the real stuff" are an armchair traveler's heaven. Le Draoulec was raised in Southern California by her French parents and American-style pie was not part of her culinary vocabulary. Her first quest began with a job opportunity in New York. In the company of a good friend, she chose to head eastward via the leisurely "pieways" of the United States. Beginning in Pescadero, CA, with a slice of Emma Duarte's Olallieberry Pie, Le Draoulec's first journey ended in Nyack, NY, with Deborah Tyler's Apple Plum Pie. It was several years later when the pie quest resumed in Ohio (bereft of memorable, homemade pie) and ended in Washington, DC after swinging West and South for such treats as Kathy's Apricot Cream Pie from the Pie-o-neer Cafe in Pie Town, NM, Libby Bollino's Turtle Pie in Abbeville, LA, and Lora Hansen's Rustic Huckleberry Peach Pie in Coram, MT. There are recipes for the best pies, photos of pie makers, and a plethora of pie puns in this delightful book. Journalist and restaurant critic for the New York Daily News, Le Draoulec is an enthusiastic tour guide with a quirky sense of humor and a personal life as unpredictable as piecrust. American Pie takes the reader into the heart and soul of a fading icon and inspires us to get out the rolling pin and take to the road. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Janet Ross, formerly with Sparks Branch Lib., Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. If it's true that there's nothing more genuinely American than pie, then Pascale Le Draoulec is the gastronomic version of Alexis de Tocqueville. Cruising the U.S. in her Volvo, food critic Le Draoulec searched for the best pies, both homemade and commercially produced, and for the histories of those who make them. Collecting her memoirs of these trips in American Pie , she found a lot of truths about America's diversity. She sampled huckleberry pie in Montana and cherry pie in Michigan. Pies from the South abound, many of them old family recipes rarely seen outside the places they originated. Oddly enough, Le Draoulec doesn't record any expeditions to New England, reputedly home to some of the country's best pies.