Trail of Crumbs

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 Sunée’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 school or church (the other was an adopted girl who became her sister, also Korean). At the age of 21, she becomes involved with a famous French businessman (the founder of L’Occitane) and suddenly finds herself living in France, mistress over his houses in Provence and Paris, and stepmother to his eight year-old daughter.

Despite this glamorous lifestyle, she remains a perennial fish-out-of-water, and it is only in the kitchen that Kim seems to feel at home. Whether it be sticking her head in her grandparents’ refrigerator when something was spoiled because “it smelled like Korea,” or routinely cooking for 30 French dinner guests when she is the only American, it is in food and cooking that Kim finds solace and a sense of place. 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.