A good memoir is like a good loaf of bread. First, there’s the crispy crust, making way for the airy, chewy center. All this good loaf of bread needs is a wedge of cheese, a piece of fruit and a glass of wine.

Trail of Crumbs, a memoir by Kim Sunee, is full of the crusty tidbits and airy, chewy morsels of her life. Abandoned as a toddler by her mother in South Korea, Sunee was adopted and raised by an American couple in New Orleans. There, her Asian features announced her otherness, and distanced her from family and friends. As a college student searching for a place she could truly call home, she traveled first to France and then to Sweden. In Stockholm at the tender age of 23, she met Olivier Baussan, founder of L’Occitane, a French skin care and bath company, who would eventually form olive oil chain Oliviers & Co. She moved to France with him, beginning a decade-long relationship. During the often stormy connection, Sunee explored and deepened her love for food and cooking, became a loving stepmother to Olivier’s young daughter, and eventually discovered her need to create something of her own, for herself, by herself.

As a child of the Asian and American cultures, neither of one of which she felt comfortable in, Sunee also never felt comfortable in France, where she was identified first by others, and later by herself, as Olivier’s woman. Her attempts to find her own essence, through running a poetry bookstore, then through psychoanalysis, are at times encouraged and hindered by Olivier, whose controlling nature ultimately overpowers the relationship.

Trail of Crumbs also includes several recipes for Provencal-style dishes like cream of chestnut soup, figs in red wine and creme caramel, as well as some from her Louisiana upbringing. They are the wine and cheese of the memoir, bright spots in an otherwise crusty, chewy account of Sunee’s search for a place to call home.

Kelly Koepke is a freelance food and lifestyle writer in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

These days, it seems that everyone wants to write a memoir, but let’s face it not everyone should. Kelly Corrigan is the exception, and her memoir, The Middle Place, arrives on the scene with an emphatic Hello, world! In 2004, both Corrigan and her father were diagnosed with cancer, and The Middle Place is an account of what follows. Much more than a recovery memoir or coming-of-age story, it is about being a parent and a child at the same time, a portrait of what it feels like to stand with one foot in each world as Corrigan describes it, that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. Corrigan’s beloved father, George, is a larger-than-life character who literally greets each day by throwing open the windows and exclaiming Hello, world! He’s Irish-Catholic, a lacrosse fanatic and coach, and the quintessential salesman. Corrigan’s relationship with her father not only shapes who she is, but serves as a touchstone as she makes her way through their respective battles with late-stage cancer.

In the first chapter, Corrigan describes the moment she first discovers the lump in her breast, and then the journey she embarks upon as her worst fears are realized. Descriptions of her treatment are contrasted with pitch-perfect vignettes of domestic life as the mother of two young daughters and wife of an adoring (and adorable) husband. She alternates these with stories from her Catholic upbringing in Philadelphia, seamlessly weaving together past and present.

Whether recounting a particularly funny episode from childhood involving her brother’s boa constrictor or the time when she had a friend pre-emptively shave her head during chemo, Corrigan infuses her prose with vivacity and humor. She explores that process called growing up, and how it can happen in a defining moment, like a lightning strike, but also how it is illuminated in less dramatic ones, like flickers of heat lightning in a summer sky. And if you happen to be George, otherwise known as Kelly Corrigan’s father, you embrace it all, not gingerly, but with a bear hug.