American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads [Hardcover]

Pascale Le Draoulec (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2002

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.

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 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

From Publishers Weekly

"Pie just may be the madonna-whore of the dessert world," Le Draoulec writes. She guesses it has something to do with "pie's dual nature; the fact that pie is both sensuous and maternal. Sweet yet sensible." A single career woman in her mid-30s, Le Draoulec has the same conflicted feelings about her ex-boyfriend and ticking biological clock that she does about homemade pie and its meaning in the modern world. As she crisscrosses the country in a Volvo named Betty Blue with IBRK4PIE plates, what seems at first like a carefree road trip in search of the perfect slice becomes much more than just a whimsical travelogue with great recipes. The author journeys along America's roads less traveled and finds that while many traditional bakers are disappearing, the power of homemade pie lives on. "Many people believe that the answers to life's bigger questions lie in the numeral pi," one pie-loving mathematician she meets postulates. "Perhaps it's also true of the kind you bake." Le Draoulec's conclusions about pie and its place in her life are, like a good slice of apple, sweet without being cloying and tart without being bitter. Of course, a book about pies wouldn't be complete without the recipes, and Le Draoulec offers such roadside pies as Libby Bollino's Turtle Pie from Abbeville, La.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (April 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060197366
• ISBN-13: 978-0060197360
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #672,117 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Baking > Pies

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PIE QUEST ACROSS AMERICA, June 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads (Hardcover)

This is a lovely book for all pie makers and pie lovers. The quest for pie is so pure that doors are open to Ms Le Draoulec that might now have been to others on a different journey.
I too love to collect "pie lore", the tales and thoughts of pie makers. The particular ones in this book are a delight.
The first part of the book was intriguing but I was absolutely in love with the tale by the time we meet Juanita and her Rhubarb Cream Pie.
Many books with recipes fail at this point. The story is good but what about the recipes? Do these recipes prove to be good? Well Jaunita's pie was simple and just darn divine!! It charmed
me and my basic-apple-pie husband had to have seconds!
THANKS Pascale for the heavenly experience.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious Fun, Inectious Enthusiasm! Sit Back and Enjoy!, October 3, 2003

By 

Jennifer Juday "Working Mom & Cook" (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads (Hardcover)

This book is a delightful mix of food writing, recipe book, travelogue, Americana, and good literature. It is light, fluffy and fun, and reading it might just change your life, if you let it.

Le Draoulec has a love of small-town America that gives this delightful book the flavor of a Charles Kurault essay. She spent several weeks crossing the United States with two simple rules -- stay off the big freeways and look for great pie. To add to the fun, she took a girlfriend, someone who had explored Australia but never small-town America. The two set off into the unknown, and quickly give themselves over to this delightful adventure.("We tossed our running shoes in the trunk, and that's where they stayed for the next three weeks.")

As a lover of pie, a baker of pie, as someone who often takes trips on the small roads and who loves to stop at non-chain restaurants, I loved the idea. Le Draoulec delivers. This book is as sweet, wholesome and gently spicy as a good homemade apple pie.

But wait... did I mention the recipes? She didn't just find pie, she came back with recipes! I have tried just a few, and each so far has been great.

Underlying all this great material is the fact that Pascale Le Draoulec can write. She has a wonderfully light touch with langauge -- never awkward. Her literary references land as fun, mind-expanding, rather than reminder's of the author's education.

And, yes, reading a book with this much love in it can change your life. I am more likely now to go ahead and order dessert when I see pie on the menu, and I am more likely to stop in a small, independent restaurant where I might find pie. Just last week, I got to tell an Austin chef how good her pie is. She glowed. My husband just sat back, smiled, and watched the two of us share our passion for pie. As soon as you start talking pie with someone, you're not strangers anymore.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Thelma and Louise go for pie, November 8, 2004

By 

Mr. Chips (Columbia, MO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads (Hardcover)

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.