The PIE Letters: Thoughts and Reflections on Pie and Life

Shortly after starting a “Pie of the Month Club,” Coletta Kewitt’s business grew to eighty pies a month. Using a commercial kitchen about thirty miles from her home, she would head into town after a day of baking with a car filled with warm pie. Along the way, she prayed for no sudden stops. When her dear friend died, she wrote her first “pie letter” which she taped to the top of the pie boxes. Customers urged her to write more letters, and thus began her monthly essays on pie and life. Many times, she would see customers sitting in their cars reading their pie letters before taking off for home. Readers will learn the benefits of P.I.E. -- “patience in everything,” which is one of the greatest blessings God can bestow on us. Review A debut work combines inspirational thoughts with recollections of warm, fresh-baked pies.Kewitt’s book is the culmination of a long and touching story that began many years ago. Four years after herhusband’s suicide, the author started a “Pie of the Month Club” in Wyoming. Soon, she was using a nearbycommercial kitchen to produce 80 pies a month for her customers. She grew into the habit of taping quick,inspirational “pie letters” to the boxes of her wares. After retiring the Pie of the Month Club, Kewitt decided tocollect these “pie letters” and compile them in this work, with color illustrations by Weed. In the book’s quickchapters, the author blends her experiences as a pie maker with her personal Christian faith. For instance, inthe chapter “Pie-ology 101,” she reflects on the connection between her faith and her passion. “How awesometo ponder how our Creator has put our individual ingredients so carefully together, yet we get to choose ourfinishing touches, and the temperature settings of the day,” she writes. “Sometimes we’re hot; sometimeswe’re not!” This cheerful, upbeat tone fills the volume as Kewitt weaves in her own personal history with thematter of pie making. “Life as the child of a pastry chef would seem so glamorously full of sugar andhappiness...wrong!” she writes at one point. “My siblings and I wanted everything that we were not allowed toeat (such is the way of life)!” The author often broadens the scope of her expanded “letters” to include largerlooks at life and the natural world of her home. This approach works effectively to make a collection of fairlycommonplace faith observations deepen into a more intriguing and involving book. Kewitt’s Christianreaders-and of course, all of her former Pie of the Month Club customers-will likely find much to treasure inthese pages.A heartwarming series of reflections on pies and the Christian faith--KirkusReviews About the Author The joys of baking inspired Coletta Kewitt to formally study and earn her certificate in pastry at Bellingham Technical College. She works as a personal chef in Cody, Wyoming.