Overview

I approached Trail of Crumbs with some trepidation. In Kim Sunée’s coming-of-age-memoir, she travels the world and uses food to find herself and the home she never felt she had. It seemed as if it would be cheesy, a tearjerker just waiting for the Hollywood adaptation. However, Trail of Crumbs is saved from a path of maudlin sentimentality by Sunée’s intensely honest, earnest telling of her story, and her poetic, yet unfussy writing style.

Profesionally, Sunée is an author, the founding food editor of Cottage Living, and hosts “Local Flavor with Kim Sunée” on MyRecipes.com. She has also contributed to various magazines and newspapers, including People, Elle and Glamour. She maintains a regularly updated blog, available at http://kimsunee.com/blog/.

Trail of Crumbs details Kim’s life, from early memories of her childhood abandonment in Korea, to her adoption and upbringing in New Orleans, to her travels around the world. The main focus is on her life in Provence as the companion of Olivier Baussan, a wealthy French businessman. Underlying the exotic locations and food is Kim’s search for identity, her yearning for a place to feel at home. One of the more intriguing aspects of the book is the power play between Kim, the young inexperienced outsider, and Olivier’s self-assured Frenchman. In fact, the details of their relationship are far more compelling even than Kim’s search for identity. Without revealing too much of the story, the peak of their increasingly difficult relationship leaves much more of an emotional impact than Kim’s anti-climactic return to Korea.

Most chapters conclude with a few recipes, appropriate to the setting. They consist primarily of Provencale and New Orleans cuisine, with some selections from across the globe –Swedish potato temptation or quick-fix kimchi, for example. In terms of difficulty, the recipes range from very simple, to her grandfather’s extremely long and labour-intensive Crawfish Bisque. The recipes don’t necessarily inspire the reader to jump into the kitchen, but they are a nice touch and complement Kim’s journey.

The last few chapters of the book seem to lose pace, and waver in interest. Her relationships with other men pale in comparison to Olivier, and contribute very little to Kim’s development, or the story. Ultimately, however, this is a compelling tale, all the more heart warming for Sunée’s refusal to over-sentimentalize her story or to provide a classic happy ending.