Wade on Birmingham

Hungry heart

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Birmingham author shares global journey in ‘Trail of Crumbs’

kim sunée

She had planned on entering the Southern Living Cook-Off and wound up writing for the magazine. And she had planned on assembling a cookbook and wound up writing her memoir.

But Kim Sunée has grown accustomed to the winding path, one that leads her from place to place in search of home. She details this journey in her first book, “Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home.”

The Birmingham author and magazine editor signs copies tonight and Tuesday at local bookstores.

A sense of home

kim sunée“I didn’t set out writing it thinking it’s everybody’s story — obviously, it’s a memoir,” Sunée says. “Everybody is looking for where they belong in the world, even those who are not adopted.

“Everybody is searching for a sense of home, a sense of place. In that sense, it’s everybody’s story.”

That story, her story, begins in 1973 in a crowded Korean marketplace, where Sunée and her younger brother were abandoned by their mother. She becomes part of an American family in New Orleans, but never sees her brother or parents again.

“Trail” chronicles her journey from Deep South childhood to studying abroad at age 17 in France. She spends the 1990s with noted French businessman Olivier Baussan as lover and stepmother.

After breaking it off with him, she returns to New Orleans before landing a job at Southern Living in Birmingham in 2003.

A friend encourages her to enter the magazine’s Cook-Off recipe contest, so she looks for details online. Instead, she finds a job opening in the test kitchen. After a year at Southern Living, she moves over to help launch sister publication Cottage Living as food editor.

Stop and go

kim sunéeNearly five years in Birmingham, with new digs in the Highland Park area, she’s still not quite at home.

“It does feel like another place on the journey,” she says. “I’m happy to be here. I really love my job at Cottage Living, but I don’t want to be here 100 percent of the time.

“I’m trying to feel like this is home when I’m here. Who knows? I could be here 10 years from now and have five kids. I don’t feel completely rooted here.”

That restless spirit comes in handy with her busy travel schedule, for work, for fun and now for promotion. Sunée, 37-ish, takes a couple of trips each year to France, to reconnect with friends and discover new places in Europe.

And she speaks French, bien sûr. And Swedish. And broken Spanish and Italian. The manuscript, at some point, will likely be published in two languages unfamiliar to her: Hebrew and Korean.

While she grew up immersed in a love of words and language, Sunée’s bigger passion may be food. After all, she had planned on penning a cookbook, but instead set down her life’s story over the course of several years. The book features her recipes throughout, as she cites food as her means of discovering her home in the world.

On the menu

Her favorites among the two dozen recipes include Almond-Saffron Cake, Wild Peaches Poached in Lillet Blanc and Lemon Verbena, and Chicken in Vin Jaune with Morels and Crème Fraîche. And she may add a few more to the paperback version.

When not cooking, she prefers to dine at Southside restaurants Hot and Hot Fish Club, Highlands or Chez Fonfon, or Lakeview bistro Bettola, or even a hole-in-the-wall Mexican dive.

Not that she has much time to eat. The tour continues on weekends at workshops and conferences across the country. Plus, Barnes and Noble has selected it as part of its Discover Great New Writers promotion. She describes the feedback from family, somewhat reluctantly, as “89 percent supportive.”

A treatment for her next project is due in a couple of weeks, possibly a follow-up memoir to “Trail of Crumbs” or even a collection of poetry. And while Sunée owns the movie rights, she says she can’t picture it on the big screen.

This former orphan still plans on returning to Seoul to resume her search for her birth parents and her brother.

“I would like to find him or my parents, my mother especially, mainly just to let them know that I’m OK, that they made the right choice and I’m OK.”

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3 Yips for “Hungry heart”

  1. Matt
    Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 7:27 am
    1

    Amazing story – can’t wait to check out the book.

  2. Wade
    Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 6:15 pm
    2

    I’ll be happy to lend you my copy once I’m done reading it.

  3. headsubhead.com » Local author interview
    Wednesday, January 30, 2008, 10:33 am
    3

    […] of wadeonbirmingham.com fame, has posted an insightful interview with Birmingham author Kim Sunée. She’s making the rounds promoting her new book Trail of Crumbs. It’s worth a  look. […]

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