At first when I read the title of the book, Pie Town Woman, authored by Joan Myers, I could not imagine a town being called Pie Town! However, the town actually exists and is located in New Mexico. Its population is about 55 persons, certainly not a metropolis!

You may ask how the town derived its name? Apparently around 1922 a fellow by the name of Clyde Norman came to New Mexico in order to homestead. As he could not find a desirable property he decided to open a mining operation on a forty-acre piece of land that later became known as highway 60. In order to survive he opened a grocery store that sold various items such as food, gasoline, kerosene and other commodities. Norman saw the opportunity to sell doughnuts to his customers and this in turn led him to bake and sell pies. The pies became an immediate success and he soon replaced his original sign to read “Pie Town.” Eventually Norman sold his enterprise to someone by the name of Harmon L. Craig who was instrumental in convincing the appropriate authorities to call the town Pie Town.

A photographer by the name of Russell Lee and his wife Jean became acquainted with Pie Town in April of 1940. They were very moved by the fortitude of the homesteaders who farmed in and around the area and how they barely eked out a living. As the author states, “the people were enacting the role of pioneers in the legendary drama of a frontier community. Although the Depression was a desperate time, the days when a family could clear a patch of land, raise a few crops, and be contentedly self-sufficient were over in the rest of the country.”

Lee, who was an employee of the Farmers Security Administration and other New Deal Agencies, convinced his boss, Roy Styker, that it would be extremely useful to tell the story of this part of New Mexico with a series of photographs in order to convince the FSA to adopt programs to aid homesteaders. At the time no programs of this nature existed.

During the course of his stay in Pie Town, Lee and his wife, had taken innumerable photographs that served as an historical record of small-town America. These photographs ultimately have found their way into the archives of the Library of Congress. Among the more than six hundred photos taken of Pie Town and vicinity were about one hundred taken of a woman by the name of Doris Caudill, her husband Faro and their daughter Josie.

In 1984 photographer and writer Joan Myers found herself in Pie Town on her way back from visiting her brother in Arizona. She vaguely remembered Russell Lee, the photographer, and his photographs of Pie Town. However, what did in fact leave a lasting impression on Myers was a photograph of a woman looking proudly at one of her jars of canned goods. This woman was Doris Caudill.

Myers decided to track down Doris and she is led to Cascade Locks, Oregon. The book recounts the many conversations the author has with Doris describing her life as a homesteader. The lack of food, medical care, electricity, water accessibility and even the difficulty of burying people are all portrayed by their conversations and some of Doris’s photos that are shared with the author. Eventually, spurned on by her curiosity and the stories recounted to her by Doris, Myers returns to Pie Town and the nearby town of Divide where Doris actually lived.

The book is generously illustrated with reproductions of several of Russell Lee’s photographs as well as those of the author. It is these photographs that compliment the author’s conversations with Doris in depicting the social, economic, and geographic elements that characterized many of these small towns during the Depression.

One criticism I have about the book is that there should have been some background information as to what was the homestead law and what exactly was homesteading. The author apparently presumes that the reader is aware of one of the most important laws ever passed in the United States. Unfortunately, many readers never heard of the law or its objective. Another shortcoming of the book is the lack of coherent organization of the various chapters. For example, the chapter dealing with Russell Lee should have appeared at the very beginning of the book in order to give the reader an idea as to what were the objectives of the photographs. Apart from these shortcomings, readers of this book will be captivated by the hardships endured by many homesteaders wherever they may have been living during the terrible Depression years.