Hot Dogs & Croissants

When two sisters’ plans for a happy future don’t materialize in their native France, they depart for America and a new start. Working as freelance journalists, Natasha and Victorine travel to out-of-the-way locations. In this strange and sometimes snarky volume, the authors interview and photograph offbeat characters and their strange culinary habits. Their first stop is a competitive eating contest on Coney Island; next, they depart for Texas, where Victorine, a vegetarian, is appalled while visiting a local cattle ranch. Later they encounter a potent dose of racism while consuming barbecue with two Texas cowboys. With snake handlers in West Virginia, they experience the region’s poverty and hospitality, dining on pork scrapple and sleeping in a ramshackle trailer. For a story on the women of the KKK, they picnic and learn to shoot guns. A trip into the underground world of the mole people, who live under the streets of New York and survive on dumpster food, proves to be frightening authors. It’s not until they visit an idyllic organic farm in upstate New York, manned by a pair of former Manhattan attorneys, that they discover all Americans don’t devour processed food, overeat, and waste the earth’s gifts. Though the authors offer some insight along the way, too often they perpetuate stereotypes. Agent Paula Munier, Talcott Notch Literary Services. [em](Feb.) [/em]