Making Piece

February 27, 2012
A fateful, sorrowful trajectory takes Los Angeles journalist turned pie maker Howard from an erratic, far-flung career back to her origins in Iowa, which just happens to be the pie-baking capital of the country. Married for six years to Marcus, a German automotive executive, though separated from him in 2009, contemplating divorce and living far apart, Howard learns that her 43-year-old husband has died suddenly in Germany of a ruptured aorta, stemming from a congenital condition not deemed problematic. The news plunges Howard into a period of down-spiraling guilt and self-examination, and she drifts back to Portland, where they once lived together, to indulge her grief and anger, before casting back to her therapeutic pie-making days at Mary’s Kitchen in Malibu. With the help of her friend Janine, a TV producer, she takes her pie-making skills on the road, specifically in Marcus’s beloved RV called the Beast. Team Pie travels from town to town shooting a pie documentary (also a potential TV pilot), interviewing bakers at legendary diners from San Francisco to L.A., and giving out free pie on National Pie Day (January 23) in downtown L.A. Howard’s long-winding, occasionally tedious, and forcibly pie-trope-heavy journey finally deposits her serendipitously at the American Gothic House, in Eldon, Iowa, made famous by painter Grant Wood. Here she reigns as America’s Pie Lady, rendered in one unique, crazy-quilt, truly American tale of reinvention.

March 1, 2012
Howard's husband died suddenly, seven hours before he was due to sign their divorce papers. In Making Piece, she describes taking on her grief and guilt through baking. In the same vein as Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love (2006), Howard seeks experiences to bring meaning to her life, but in this case, she's mourning a loss, traveling in an RV, and finding solace in shortening. Previously, Howard had quit a six-figure, web-producing job to bake pies for the stars in Malibu for a year, and since 2007, she has written a blog called The World Needs More Pie. Bakers will enjoy her recognition of baking as a restorative, meditative act. There are some pie-baking tips in the lovingly rendered cooking scenes, which practically bubble off the page, and naturally, the book includes a handful of recipes. But the real focus here is grievingthe triumphs, the setbacks, the way it touches everyoneand how, in the 19 months following her husband's death, pie gives Howard a purpose again.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)