New Travel Book: ‘Trail of Crumbs’

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  02.22.08 | 11:09 AM ET

imageFull title: “Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home”

Author: Kim Sunée, a well-traveled poet and food editor at Cottage Living.

Released: Jan. 8, 2008

Travel genre: Culinary travel memoir

Territory covered: Louisiana, South Korea, France, Sweden

Promo copy: “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.”

Critical verdict: “‘Trail of Crumbs’ is laden with dreamy, luscious evocations of cooking, eating and consuming. They read as expressions of longing, of a need for a place in the world to call home.” (Chicago Tribune.) Sunée’s “book is filled with all kinds of recipes: Korean, Creole, Swedish, Italian and, of course, French. This sad and passionate story of displacement, of trying to find a place to call home, written with the touch of a poet, is a tale that you won’t soon forget.” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Recent buzz: A profile in The New York Times.

Find it: Amazon, Powell’s, BookSense.

Related on World Hum:
* New Travel Book: ‘Flight Attendants’
* New Travel Book: ‘Traversa’

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Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


1 Comment for New Travel Book: ‘Trail of Crumbs’

Celebrity Foods 02.22.08 | 6:32 PM ET

I just ordered the book and I can’t wait for it to come.  It sounds very interesting.  Thank you for the review.

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