"You will find my story is a lot like pie, a strawberry-rhubarb pie. It's bitter. It's messy. It's got some sweetness, too. Sometimes the ingredients get added in the wrong order, but it has substance, it will warm your insides, and even though it isn't perfect, it still turns out okay in the end."
When journalist Beth M. Howard's young husband dies suddenly, she packs up the RV he left behind and hits the American highways. At every stop along the way—whether filming a documentary or handing out free slices on the streets of Los Angeles—Beth uses pie as a way to find purpose. Howard eventually returns to her Iowa roots and creates the perfect synergy between two of America's greatest icons—pie and the American Gothic House, the little farmhouse immortalized in Grant Wood's famous painting, where she now lives and runs the Pitchfork Pie Stand.
Making Piece powerfully shows how one courageous woman triumphs over tragedy. This beautifully written memoir is, ultimately, about hope. It's about the journey of healing and recovery, of facing fears, finding meaning in life again, and moving forward with purpose and, eventually, joy. It's about the nourishment of the heart and soul that comes from the simple act of giving to others, like baking a homemade pie and sharing it with someone whose pain is even greater than your own. And it tells of the role of fate, second chances and the strength found in community.
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"Beth Howard describes with warmth and wit how the bitter events in life are set off by the sweet ones-much like the ingredients of a good recipe. Making Piece is a moving account of love and loss." -- Jeanette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle
About the Author
Beth M. Howard has been a journalist for more than 20 years, specializing in personality profiles, adventure travel and outdoor sports. In 2001, she quit a lucrative web-producing job to bake pies at a gourmet deli in Malibu, California. She started her popular blog, The World Needs More Pie, in 2007, and it has been featured in publications worldwide. She lives in Eldon, Iowa. Visit her at TheWorldNeedsMorePie.com.
Beth M. Howard, author of "Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie," has been a journalist for more than 25 years specializing in personality profiles, adventure travel, and outdoor sports. She has written for Shape, Elle, Travel & Leisure, Fitness, and many other magazines. Her assignments have taken her sky diving, dog sledding in Alaska, scuba diving with sharks, and competing in the Eco-Challenge, a ten-day multi-sport race through Utah's wilderness, which she and her team successfully finished.She has worked as a senior editor for Sports Traveler and a contributing editor for Sports Illustrated Women. She has been a producer for MSN.com's Women's Channel and for MSNBC.com's 2002 Winter Olympics official Web site. For six years she freelanced for Microsoft Corporation as the content editor for Bill Gates' annual CEO Summit.
Before becoming a journalist, Howard established herself as a successful public relations executive. She began as a PR manager for a Hyatt Hotels mega-resort in Hawaii, which led to an account executive position at Rogers & Cowan in Los Angeles, where she launched the original hit TV series Beverly Hills, 90210. Other high-profile PR projects have included Diedrich Coffee, Hilton Hotels, and FUEL TV (a unit of Fox), establishing an internal publicity department for the action-sports cable network.
At the age of 25, she started a gourmet coffee business in Nairobi, Kenya, living the life of a modern-day Karen Blixen. She marketed her award-winning coffee in Kenya and the U.S. But after convincing The New York Times to run a story on her product, she knew media was her true calling.
She received a Bachelor of Arts from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, graduating in three years with an emphasis on communications and environmental studies. She has worked and lived throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. She continues to practice speaking French, Spanish, and German, though, admittedly, she gave up on Japanese and has forgotten most of her Swahili.
Currently, Beth is living in Eldon, Iowa, in the famous American Gothic House, where she wrote her memoir, published April 1, 2012. On summer weekends, she runs the Pitchfork Pie Stand. She continues to write for magazines and is developing a TV/web series about pie. Her story and her blog, "The World Needs More Pie," has been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, New York Times, Readers Digest, Midwest Living, Real Simple, Country Living, CBS This Morning, NPR, and many other national media outlets.
Just as she fashions pie crust with her bare hands, Beth M. Howard has fashioned a memoir that is filled with warmth, sincerity of emotion and honest humor. I truly enjoyed reading this book and found it difficult to put down as I journeyed through the vivid descriptions of Ms. Howard's love affair with pie and her late husband Marcus. She captured the complexity of human emotions that exists in any marriage, and honestly shared the stresses that cultural differences, careers, and distance can place on a marriage no matter how much love is there. All of this is folded into her love of pie and how it has been her guide, companion and teacher in life. I highly recommend this book, with one warning: when you finish reading it, you WILL want to bake a pie!
When I first saw this book, I knew I had to read it. Food. Memoir. Yes, please! And I was not disappointed.
Beth's story is like pie. Specifically, strawberry-rhubarb.
"It's bitter. It's messy. It's got some sweetness, too. Sometimes the ingredients get added in the wrong order, but it has substance, it will warm your insides and, even though it isn't perfect, it still turns out okay in the end."
I was crying within the first thirty pages. Beth writes herself so well that I felt as if her words were my own. When her heart broke, mine broke right with her.
When she began to rebuild her life, my heart rejoiced with hers.
"All I had to do was look around the room to see that you can lose your loved ones and still have fun, and not live like your heart is caged behind bars."
Beth's journey was full of pain, sorrow, humor, kindness, and pie. Lots and lots of pie. I am inspired to bake pie - and lucky for me, there are recipes in the back of the book! I'm going to start with the Banana Cream Pie and then make the French Silk Pie (and according to Beth, this recipe is better than sex!).
Bottom line - this is a memoir everyone should read.
Full Disclosure: I know Beth Howard. That's why I read her book. Actually, I read it out loud to my wife.
What makes this tome so engaging is it's honesty. Beth is a no-nonsense type of woman. She put her story on these pages as she lived it-very emotional, lots of raw edges, no holding back. This gritty style of writing gives the reader permission to feel the loss, anger, desperation, sadness, and love that she describes in her memoir. Her non-linear telling of this intense journey along with other life happenings keep the reader engrossed. The back story provides some needed breaks from the emotional ups and downs directly related to her husband's death and Beth's grieving process.
The book forced me to reexamine many aspects of my life as it places the fragility of our existence directly in our sights. From that angle, it's a masterful example of the self-help genre without any preaching. At its essence, it's an intimate look at life through Beth's eyes; eyes that reflect an intelligent, creative, caring person dealing with a situation all-too familiar to many. We empathize with her, exult in her progress, and its all done with pie as the backdrop.
