Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home
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Already hailed as "brave, emotional, and gorgeously written" by Frances Mayes and "like a piece of dark chocolate—bittersweet, satisfying, and finished all too soon" by Laura Fraser, author of An Italian Affair, this is a unique memoir about the search for identity through love, hunger, and food.Jim Harrison says, "TRAIL OF CRUMBS reminds me of what heavily costumed and concealed waifs we all are. Kim Sunée tells us so much about the French that I never learned in 25 trips to Paris, but mostly about the terrors and pleasure of that infinite octopus, love. A fine book."When Kim Sunée was three years old, her mother took her to a marketplace, deposited her on a bench with a fistful of food, and promised she'd be right back. Three days later a policeman took the little girl, clutching what was now only a fistful of crumbs, to a police station and told her that she'd been abandoned by her mother.Fast-forward almost 20 years and Kim's life is unrecognizable. Adopted by a young New Orleans couple, she spends her youth as one of only two Asian children in her entire community. At the age of 21, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman and suddenly finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses in Provence and Paris, and stepmother to his eight year-old daughter.Kim takes readers on a lyrical journey from Korea to New Orleans to Paris and Provence, along the way serving forth her favorite recipes. A love story at heart, this memoir is about the search for identity and a book that will appeal to anyone who is passionate about love, food, travel, and the ultimate search for self. The Barnes & Noble Review You've doubtless heard the expression "Food is love" -- but it's rarely so literally expressed as in Kim Sunée's memoir. Abandoned by her mother in a Korean marketplace at age three, Sunée was adopted, along with another Korean baby girl, by an American couple and raised in New Orleans. She came closest to finding a sense of belonging when she worked in the kitchen alongside her adopted grandfather, Poppy. "Suzy and I are the only Oriental girls, as we are called, in our school," she writes, "so the comfort of Poppy's kitchen after school every day, the promise of his home-cooked meals, are a refuge solid food to remind us that we exist, that we live in a new world where we have not been forgotten." Readers track Sunée's journey through her misfit childhood, her exotic European travels, her absorption into the world of a rich, attentive, yet controlling lover -- their relationship is so food-focused that what may be the most erotic passage is about eating "fresh fat figs dripping with their own milk" -- and, ultimately, her struggle to find her own voice, purpose, and place. Along the way, Sunée drops favorite recipes -- from Poppy's Crawfish Bisque to La Daube Provençale to Kimchi Soup -- like breadcrumbs along her path, leading the reader to the sumptuous heart of her tale. --Amy Reiter
