World Piece: A Pie Baker's Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding

by Beth M. Howard

Beth Howard always dreamed of circumnavigating the planet; not to tick off a list of tourist sites, but to immerse herself in the culture of each country by making pie with local residents. Pie had healed her grief after her husband’s death, so why not use it to heal the world and promote peace? Hauling her rolling pin from New Zealand to Australia, Thailand to India, Lebanon to Greece, Switzerland to Germany and Hungary, Howard uses America’s iconic comfort food as a means to connect with people in their homes, kitchens, and cafés. In each region, she offers pie lessons and, in turn, learns about the surprising origins of ingredients and traditional dishes—including pie in its myriad forms. During her demanding three-month journey, she meets charming characters, experiences uncanny coincidences, and finds kindness when she least expects it. She also encounters geopolitical unrest (past and present) that prompts the questions: Why is world peace so elusive? And what can we do to achieve it? She offers some answers in her feisty, often funny, always unflinching voice. Underlying her pie and peace mission is her personal story about overcoming fear, letting go of grief, searching for a new home, and making room for new love. A balanced blend of multi-cultural insight, world history, social commentary, immersive travel, and the comfort of pie, World Piece could be described as Waitress meets Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, as Howard takes the reader on a deeply intimate, delicious, and inspirational global adventure.

327 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2022

About the author

Beth Howard is an author, blogger, and pie baker. She is the author of "World Piece: A Pie Baker's Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding," "Making Piece: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie" and the cookbook, "Ms. American Pie," as well as "Hausfrau Honeymoon: Love, Language, and Other Misadventures in Germany." She is the former (and final) resident of the iconic American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa, where from 2010 to 2014 she ran the Pitchfork Pie Stand. Her websites are www.bethmhoward.com and www.theworldneedsmorepie.com.

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As Beth Howard embarks on her personal quest to make the world a better place by sharing her love of pie, she simultaneously searches for inner peace and a sense of direction for her personal future - a place to live, a home to love, a center to her universe from which she can navigate the rest of her life.

If you read her earlier book, Making Piece, A Memoir of Love, Loss and Pie, you know how Howard’s love affair with pie started and the journey began. Marriage, sudden widowhood and the decision to leave Grant Wood’s American Gothic House and her Pitchfork Pie Stand business, she finds herself at loose ends with the world.

Howard plans a trip using thousands of frequent flyer miles she inherited from her late husband. In World Piece, she takes her readers on her far-reaching journey that encompasses all the struggles one might imagine - separation from her aging parents and her beloved pet, trans-continental travel issues, the melancholy of revisiting the country where she spent her brief married life, and the unplanned for challenges and reality checks that leave her sometimes despondent and other times seriously ill.

Like a carefully crafted lattice-top pie crust, Howard weaves her cultural experiences with the intricate threads of past relationships and her new acquaintances. You’ll find yourself in remote locales, exotic cafes, tiny European kitchens, and the slums of India. You’ll smell the spices - familiar and foreign. You’ll taste bitter loss and sweet reunions. Who knows? You may just find yourself reaching for a rolling pin and making your own pie to share. If that happens - you’ll find recipes at the end of the book!

Pie lovers and peacemakers on your holiday giving list will love this read!

Making Piece: a Memoir of Love, Loss and PieMaking Piece: a Memoir of Love, Loss and PieBeth M. HowardBeth M Howard

[Melinda Tomsic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delicious and Inspiring.
Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2022
This book is wonderful memoir of one woman’s trip around the world, carrying along her rolling pin and her never-ending optimism, in an effort to spread peace and joy by making and sharing pies of every iteration with peoples of different nations and religions and tribes.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun to read

At times I wasn’t sure where she was going with the “peace through pie” thing, but it was interesting to read about her experiences, her acknowledgment of the kindness she felt, and pie is a great way to show love.

[Angie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a little bit of grief, friendship, grit, laughter, travel, romance and baking all wrapped up into a nice little package. I want to also be friends with this author. I loved her raw truth and Iowa roots. Thank you for writing this book. I am a better person for having read it.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read

[Mike Triggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

To say that I don’t usually read books about women who go around the world baking pies in search of world peace is an understatement, but I had recently moved to a third world country and had to accept the generous offer of a neighbor to read one of his books. And as it turns out I was glad I did venture outside my normal genre of books.

Once I read the first couple of pages of Beth Howard’s book, “World Piece -A Pie Baker’s Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding” I realized I knew this woman, or felt like I knew this woman as I had seen her on various Iowa TV stations talking about her Pitchfork Pie Stand at the iconic Grant Wood American Gothic House. In fact, eating a slice of her pie and having my picture taken holding a pitchfork in front of the house was one of the things I had put on my “Bucket List” of things to do while living in Iowa. Sadly it never happened, but by reading her book and eventually making an apple pie with her recipe I could feel like in a way I could check visiting the pie stand and meeting her off my bucket list.

Beth Howard has a writing style very similar to Bill Bryson, another Iowan who also wrote about about his worldwide adventures but in this book Ms. Howard attempts to circumvent the globe with rolling pin in hand in a single trip over the course of three months.

Of course Ms. Howard will most likely never win the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, she does manage to extend the the hand of friendship through her pie baking demonstrations and sharing her delightful pieces of pie in such diverse places as the slums of Mumbai, India to the war torn refugee camps in bombed out portions of the Middle East.

It wasn’t a difficult read. It was, however, the most satisfying book that I have read all year. (It was number nineteen and it’s only the middle of May!)

Unlike a delicious pie that you can’t wait to devour the last piece, I savored the last chapter because I just didn’t want the book to end.

And as a bonus, reads get Ms. Howard’s own apple pie recipe in addition to ones from New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, India, Lebanon, Switzerland, Germany
and Hungry. And you can bet I am going to try them all.