Pie Town

by Lynne Hinton

  Oris’s Famous Cowboy Beans

  4 cups dry pinto beans

  2 slices bacon, cooked and broken into small pieces

  1 small can (4 ounces) diced green chile

  1 medium onion, diced

  2 cans crushed tomatoes (14 ounces each)

  1 bottle dark or amber beer

  1 teaspoon garlic

  ½ teaspoon cumin

  1 teaspoon salt

  pepper to taste

  Soak beans for 8 to 12 hours, drain, and rinse. Place in a large pot on the stove, cover with water, and add all the rest of the ingredients. Bring beans to a boil and then simmer, covered, for about 2 hours. (Serves 10)

  Bea’s Green Chile Stew

  2 pounds lean ground round, cubed

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  2 medium or 1 large onion, chopped well

  2 cloves of garlic, minced

  2 vegetable bouillon cubes

  1 can (14 ounces) pinto beans

  2 medium potatoes, diced

  4 cans (14 ounces each) chopped tomatoes, with juice

  4 small cans (4 ounces each) chopped green chile

  2 cups water

  Brown the ground round over low heat in the olive oil. Add the onions and garlic. In another pan, cook the bouillon cubes in the water. In a larger pot, mix the remaining ingredients, then add the dissolved bouillon and cooked ground round. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 2½ to 3 hours. (Serves 8)

  Posole

  2-pound pork loin

  1 vegetable bouillon cube

  1 large onion, diced

  1 cup water

  4 small cans (4 ounces each) green chile, diced

  1 can (16 ounces) stewed tomatoes, with juice

  2 cans hominy (32 ounces each), drained

  1 teaspoon garlic powder

  salt and pepper to taste

  Boil the pork loin until tender and then cut into small cubes. Set aside. In another pan, dissolve bouillon in boiling water. Add onion, chile, tomatoes, hominy, garlic powder, salt and pepper, and then pork. Simmer for three hours. (Serves 10)

  Francine’s Banana Cream Pie

  ⅓ cup all-purpose flour

  ¾ cup white sugar

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  2 cups whole milk

  3 egg yolks, beaten

  2½ tablespoons butter

  1¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

  4½ sliced bananas

  1 9-inch pie shell, baked

  Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a saucepan. Cooking over medium heat, add milk, stirring constantly until boiling, and then continuing for about three minutes. Remove the saucepan from the burner. Add egg yolks to the mixture and place the saucepan back on the burner. Stir for three minutes. Remove from burner, add butter and vanilla extract, and stir until smooth. Place sliced bananas in the cooled pie shell. Top with the warm pudding mixture. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes at 350 degrees. Chill for at least an hour before serving. Add banana slices on top for decoration.

  Barb’s Biscochitos

  3 cups sugar

  2 cups shortening

  4 eggs

  dash of salt

  2 teaspoons soda

  4 teaspoons cream of tartar

  5½ cups flour

  1 tablespoon anise seed

  cinnamon and sugar mixture

  Mix first 4 ingredients together until blended. Stir in soda and cream of tartar, then the flour. Mix in the anise seed. Shape dough into balls and roll in mixture of cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 350 degrees (or 325 degrees convection oven) for 12 to 16 minutes, depending on size. Be sure to take these cookies out of the oven before they’re brown. They get crunchy when cooled, so if you like them soft, eat some a couple minutes after they come out of the oven!

  From Barb Hively, owner of Cravin’ Cookies and More Bakery, Albuquerque, New Mexico

  A +

  AUTHOR

  INSIGHTS,

  EXTRAS &

  MORE…

  FROM

  Lynne Hinton

  AND

  Reading Group Guide

  1. New Mexico is often described as three cultures living together: Native American, Hispanic, and Caucasian. Which characters in the book represent these three cultures, and how?

  2. Pie Town is a very small town. What are the advantages to living in a small town? What are the disadvantages?

  3. What is the role of the angel, Alice, in this story? Who needs the angel most in Pie Town? Is it Alex or someone else?

  4. How would you describe Father George? Were you surprised by his secret?

  5. At what point in the story did you think Trina might be pregnant? Do you think she was treated fairly after people found out? Where do you think an unmarried and pregnant girl would get the most support, in a small town or in a more urban setting?

  6. Despite its name, there are no pies in Pie Town. What significance does this have in the story? Do you think there will ever be pies in Pie Town?

  7. How does Pie Town illustrate the idea of “community”? How do you define community?

  8. What ultimately motivates the townspeople to help Father George rebuild the church? What does the church symbolize to the town? Why did Alex think it was so important for Pie Town to rebuild Holy Family Church?

  9. Why does Alex never seem to be mad at his mother for leaving? Do you think children forgive more easily than adults? Why or why not?

  10. Do you prefer cake or pie? What’s your favorite kind of pie?

  Finding Pie Town

  By Lynne Hinton

  About fifteen years ago, when we were dreaming of moving to New Mexico from North Carolina, my husband and I were traveling through the southwestern part of the United States. On the trip from Albuquerque to Phoenix, we stopped in a little settlement known as Pie Town. I remember thinking what a quaint and funny name for a town. As we drove through Pie Town, we noticed a small restaurant and decided to stop and, with a name like Pie Town, have some pie. Imagine our surprise when we were told there was no pie. “No pie in Pie Town?” I thought, and that notion stayed with me.

  People have often asked how I get an idea for a story, what interests me, how do I start. And the answer is something like the situation of finding no pie in Pie Town. I began to think about how often names of places or ascribed roles tempt us to make assumptions. We assume a small town will be welcoming and easy for newcomers to integrate themselves into. We assume a church will be a safe place, a loving and warm place. We assume mothers will be present for their children, and we assume children won’t die. Once we think about it, however, we realize that life is rarely what we expect. People behave in ways we never could have guessed, and life is certainly full of surprises.

  Having served as a pastor of several churches, I am often intrigued by what church members think about themselves. Most church people will proudly announce about themselves to any visitor that they are a “loving” place, a “welcoming and hospitable” place. And yet, in my experience, this is not always the case. Yes, churches can be quite welcoming and hospitable to the longtime members, the families who are connected to the area, the children who grew up in the church. But for newcomers, churches can often feel alienating and cold. As communities, as churches, as towns, as people, we are often not what we appear, and we are not always as good as we think we are. It was this irony that interested me when I began this story.

  Now, many years after my first visit to Pie Town, I have discovered that there is a place that serves pie. The Pie-O-Neer Café, open now for more than ten years, has become quite successful. The owner, Kathy Knapp, has found a great place for herself in Pie Town, and I’m happy to include a recipe from the Pie-O-Neer below. I hope you enjoy it! And if you’re in the neighborhood of Pie Town, New Mexico, please stop by and have a slice. Tell them I sent you!

  Pie-O-Neer Pecan Oat Pie

  ¼ cup butter

  ¼ cup sugar

  ½ teaspoon cinnamon

  ¼ teaspoon cloves

  ¼
teaspoon salt

  ½ cup light Karo syrup

  ½ cup dark Karo syrup

  3 eggs

  ¾ cup old-fashioned rolled oats

  1 cup toasted pecan pieces

  pie shell

  Cream together butter and sugar. Add cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Stir in syrups. Add eggs, one at a time, stirring after each addition until blended. Stir in rolled oats. Cover bottom of pie shell with toasted pecan pieces, reserving a sprinkling for the top. Pour mixture into pie shell, sprinkle rest of pecan pieces on top and bake in moderate oven (350 degrees) about one hour, or until knife inserted in center of pie comes out clean.

  From Kathy Knapp

  Owner of Pie-O-Neer Café,

  Pie Town, New Mexico

  Turn the page for a sneak peek

  at the next book in the Pie Town series,

  due out in Summer 2012 …

  Everybody in Pie Town knew exactly where they were and what they were doing when the bolt of lightning struck the transformer at a substation near the edge of town, cutting off power for half of Catron County for more than two hours. It was late, about nine o’clock in the evening, and most everyone was in some stage of preparing for bed.

  Oris Whitsett was standing at the bathroom sink. He was shaving, something he liked to do at night after his shower. He found that the hot water, the steam, the clean way he felt, the freshness of a newly shaved face, relaxed him and made it easier for him to fall asleep.

  A person who enjoyed a morning shower and shave for most of his life, Oris had begun this nightly ritual when Alice, his wife, got sick and came home from the hospital. He found that he had so much to do in the mornings getting her up and ready that he never had time until evening to think about himself and his own needs. She also seemed to appreciate his smooth face and warm body when he snuggled in bed next to her at night before falling asleep. It became a part of his pattern of caregiving and intimacy, but even years after she had died, he found he still liked a late night shower. He enjoyed an evening shave.

  He had a towel wrapped around his waist and another around his shoulders, and his face was covered in a white, thick foamy cream. He was getting ready to place the razor just at the top of his cheek when the power went out. He waited. Oris was used to the flickering of lights that often happened in Catron County, New Mexico, in the spring and summer. High winds sometimes made for power surges in the area. Usually, there were only flickers, no real outages.

  He had noticed the signs of an evening storm earlier when he went over to visit his neighbor, Millie Watson, who had taken a serious fall a few weeks earlier and had just returned from the long-term care facility in town. Her daughter had come home with her, planning to stay a couple of weeks until Millie was able to take care of herself. Oris had stopped over with two takeout enchilada dinners prepared especially for them by Fred and Bea. He had stayed for only a short time, maybe twenty minutes, and he was walking home about seven in the evening when he noticed the stirring of the wind and the tight clouds bunching overhead. He considered then that he should take his shower and shave before it got dark, but then he had gotten home and turned on the television and become interested in some show about ghosts and haunted houses. Before he knew it, he had sat through two hours of programming, and when he finally got up to take his shower, he thought the storm had come and gone.

  Oris stood at the sink in darkness and wondered if he could shave himself without watching. With one hand he touched his face, and with the other he slowly pulled the razor down. It was harder than he expected, and after the second cut, his chin burning, he stopped, wiped his face clean with the wet cloth he found in the sink, and dried his face off with the towel from around his shoulders. He then tried to make his way from the bathroom to the den. He felt around for his favorite chair, sat down, and waited.

  He knew he had candles and a couple of lanterns, but for a few minutes, an hour even, he sat in darkness. He was a bit chilled, wearing only a towel, but except for the burning from the cuts on his face, he was not uncomfortable. He actually seemed to enjoy the darkness. He closed his eyes and leaned back.

  He thought about the television show he had just watched. He thought about ghosts and haunted houses, and he thought about Alice and wondered if the darkness and the storm might bring her back to him, wondered if this might be the thing she needed to return. He wondered if a cover of darkness could bring her to him, if she had been waiting for just this occasion to visit.

  Oris knew that it had been almost an entire year since his dead wife had visited him. He remembered how it had felt when her presence was suddenly and completely gone after Alex, his great-grandson, passed away. And since that death, that horrible and grievous death, there had been no sign, no communication, no vision of his beloved, but he didn’t care. Every night he waited and he hoped. And even though he sat that night in complete darkness, his face burning from the blind shave, his body wrapped in a towel, he could not give up believing that the light, his light, would one day, once again, come.

  Acknowledgments

  The gift of a story is always a blessing. I count those blessings with great awe and respect, believing that God is good and is the source of all the good stories in my life. Sally McMillan remains a presence of light and encouragement. How fabulous for me that my agent is also my treasured friend. The Louisville Institute awarded me a Pastoral Study Grant, which has enabled me to find the time to do research and the writing. Thank you for this gift of time and money. Carolyn Marino and Wendy Lee of HarperCollins said yes. Thank you, Wendy, for your keen eye and good heart. And thank you, Carolyn, for reading my stories.

  In the year of finishing this book, I was so blessed to serve Chewelah United Church of Christ as their interim pastor. It was such a lovely place for me to land, and I will always remember my stay in the Pacific Northwest as a time of being hemmed in by mountains of kindness and friendship.

  I am always grateful for the friends and family in my life. I hope that I have made sure that you know who you are and how rich my life is because you are in it. Finally, how does a person acknowledge the love of their life? Bob Branard remains the steady and sure heartbeat of my every day. There is nothing he doesn’t do to make sure I’m happy and whole and able to write. Surely, there is no greater gift in life than the love of a good partner.

  About the Author

  Lynne Hinton is the award-winning author of thirteen books including the Hope Springs series, featuring the national bestseller, Friendship Cake. She has also written a mystery series under the name Jackie Lynn. Lynne received degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, Lynne is available for speaking engagements and offers writing and spirituality retreats in New Mexico. You can contact her at www.lynnehinton.com. You can also find her on Facebook at Lynne Hinton Books. Lynne lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband, Bob Branard.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Also by Lynne Hinton

  Fiction

  Friendship Cake

  Hope Springs

  Forever Friends

  Christmas Cake

  Wedding Cake

  The Things I Know Best

  The Last Odd Day

  The Arms of God

  Nonfiction

  Meditations for Walking

  Writing Under the Name Jackie Lynn

  Down by the Riverside

  Jacob’s Ladder

  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

  Credits

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Cover photograph by Vast Photography/Getty Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

>   PIE TOWN. Copyright © 2011 by J. Lynne Hinton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hinton, J. Lynne.

  Pie Town / Lynne Hinton. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-06-204508-9

  1. City and town life—New Mexico—Fiction. 2. Life change events—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3558.I457P54 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  2010041890

  *

  EPub Edition © June 2011 ISBN: 9780062045102

  11 12 13 14 15 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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