Pie (review)

Kind Polly Portman has won piemaking's coveted "Blueberry Award" for thirteen years running; instead of selling her pies, though, Polly gives them away, and in return folks leave her supplies such as fresh fruit, cream, and bags of flour. When Polly dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1955, her ten-year-old niece and faithful sidekick, Alice, is bereft and also puzzled, as Aunt Polly has apparently bequeathed the recipe for her famous pie crust to her grumpy cat, Lardo, and has willed Lardo to Alice. As Alice grieves, she also deals with a town suddenly full of would-be bakers and the mystery of the missing pie-crust recipe. Someone else wants that recipe as well, however, and will go to great lengths to obtain it. Eventually, Alice stops the potential pastry purloiner and unravels just what Aunt Polly has done with the recipe; the answer helps soothe both Alice and her mother, Polly's bitter sister. Weeks whips up a delicious story here, as sweet and substantial as a chocolate cream pie but with the tartness of a sour cherry confection as well. She depicts especially well the way that the smallest things evoke the most visceral grief, as when Alice realizes that the leftover piece of pie in the fridge is the last pie made by Polly that she will ever eat. A few of the small-town characters are slightly overdrawn, but the emotional arc of the story will carry readers through. The text richly describes the pie-making (and eating) process and includes multiple mouth-watering recipes for readers to try themselves. This would make a tasty readaloud for classrooms or families; stock up on pie ingredients first.