American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads

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.