Pawpaw: In Search of America's Forgotten Fruit

by Andrew Moore

The largest edible fruit native to the United States tastes like a cross between a banana and a mango. It grows wild in twenty-six states, gracing Eastern forests each fall with sweet-smelling, tropical-flavored abundance. Historically, it fed and sustained Native Americans and European explorers, presidents, and enslaved African Americans, inspiring folk songs, poetry, and scores of place names from Georgia to Illinois. Its trees are an organic grower’s dream, requiring no pesticides or herbicides to thrive, and containing compounds that are among the most potent anticancer agents yet discovered.

So why have so few people heard of the pawpaw, much less tasted one?

In Pawpaw, author Andrew Moore explores the past, present, and future of this unique fruit, traveling from the Ozarks to Monticello; canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit; drinking pawpaw beer in Durham, North Carolina; tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers; and helping out during harvest season in a Maryland orchard. Along the way, he gathers pawpaw lore and knowledge not only from the plant breeders and horticulturists working to bring pawpaws into the mainstream (including Neal Peterson, known in pawpaw circles as the fruit’s own “Johnny Pawpawseed”), but also regular folks who remember eating them in the woods as kids, but haven’t had one in over fifty years.

As much as Pawpaw is a compendium of pawpaw knowledge, it also plumbs deeper questions about American foodways―how economic, biologic, and cultural forces combine, leading us to eat what we eat, and sometimes to ignore the incredible, delicious food growing all around us. If you haven’t yet eaten a pawpaw, this book won’t let you rest until you do.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, History, Nature, Plants, Gardening, Science

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 5, 2015

About the author

Librarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jaylia3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picture a flavor that combines banana and mango, or imagine a fruit nicknamed custard apple, and what you have in your mind is the pawpaw, a fruit of tropical origin that somehow worked its way well up into North America. First eaten by megafauna like woolly mammoths, pawpaws were later enjoyed by Native Americans and early settlers. Thomas Jefferson had a grove of pawpaw trees at Monticello and considered the possibility of turning them into a cultivated crop, enslaved Africans who collected pawpaws to supplement their diets were reminded of fruits from their homelands, and when Lewis and Clark went on their exploration of western America eating local pawpaws helped them survive when they were low on provisions. So why aren’t pawpaws around today? That’s the thing, they are around. Pawpaw trees still grow wild in 26 states. Most of us have just forgotten about them.

I had almost but not quite forgotten about the pawpaw--I just never knew they were real. When I was growing up we used to belt out a folk song with the refrain “Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch!” but I didn’t realize pawpaws actually existed until not long ago when I was on a birding walk along the edge of the C&O Canal outside Washington DC. The guide pointed out some birds in a pawpaw tree on the other side of the bank, stopping me in my tracks by waking up my atavistic memory of the song and making me feel like Alice in some strange Wonderland created by ghost lyrics.

This book gives the whole fascinating, satisfying scoop on pawpaws, and will be especially interesting to anyone whose interests include plants or food or history or mystery or even wildlife--pawpaw trees are the only larval host of the exotic looking zebra swallowtail butterfly. The author made it his mission to research everything known about pawpaws and he takes readers along as he attends pawpaw festivals, talks to people who remember eating pawpaws as children, harvests fruit with farmers propagating pawpaws for a growing niche market, and searches out pawpaw trees still growing wild right under our noses (one at Jefferson’s Monticello that the tour guides didn’t know existed!) He’s especially interested in finding trees that are descendants of the ones which bore prize winning fruits in the pawpaw contest of 1916, which adds a little suspense to the story.

Engaging and informative, this book is also strikingly beautiful, even when you remove the very attractive dust jacket, because someone made the whimsical but fitting decision to color it like a pawpaw fruit--the outer hardcover is deep green and the inner endpapers are a very bright yellow. The book also includes a map of the American pawpaw belt and 8 pages of color photos.

FOUR AND A HALF STARS

[Lindsay Gasik · Rating 2 out of 5]

I asked for this book for Christmas because it is such a great idea. I love pawpaws. I love travel stories. A travel story about a fruit-hunter? Sounded amazing.

At the end, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but my most hardcore of fruit nerd friends. It's a slog through places and interviews that last a page or two at most. There's no central theme, except pawpaws, and the stories feel jarringly slapped together, in neither chronological or thematic order. Worst of all, it feels repetitive. I was disappointed.

But I did come away with some fun facts about pawpaws, my favorite being that there is a dinosaur called a pawpawsaurus.

[Mark Hartzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Mr. Moore and I appear to share a common fondness for a forgotten native fruit that deserves much wider appreciation.

About a decade ago, I planted a couple of seedlings at our old home in Illinois. In 2013, we got (or really, the raccoons got) our 1st fruits. In 2014, we had to move due to a corporate transfer. But I never lost the bug for these cool little trees.

The paw paw is a true American original. It is native to the US and southern Canada and has been here for millions of years; surviving glaciers, 20ft ground sloths and modern Americans. Despite being the largest native American fruit, it is remarkably unknown. I agree with Moore's hypothesis that one does not know about this tree unless it was on, or right next to your property.

So next autumn, find yourself a ripe paw paw. Sit down, relax. Split open a tropical, mango like fruit. Spoon out, or just gobble it. Spit out the seeds and celebrate a true American, the paw paw.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can understand why this book was a James Beard Foundation Book Award nominee and not an Award winner. The book suffers from the lack of a clear thesis and from a lack of structure, both within the chapters themselves and the book overall. Part three is especially representative of these issues. In it, the book becomes a travelogue with the author traipsing across pawpaw country with no clear purpose, nor structure, to these vignettes.
I did learn a lot about pawpaws though!

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only a total microhistory freak could manage to finish this book: a big, seemingly unedited rambling personal narrative about hunting a wild edible in season for about 2 weeks a year and eaten mostly by squirrels. But I am that reader. If you are also that reader, or know what a Hoosier banana is, you should probably pick this up. Pawpaws are the largest native fruit in the North Americas. They grow in about every state in the Midwest. I’ve never eaten them, and I’ve been trying to find a local vendor for 2 years. (I actually found a wild fruit this year but it was in a damned nature preserve so I had to leave it, because of the Code of the Hikers.)

There’s some interesting wider food history observations to the obscurity of the pawpaw: one, ease of cultivation, mechanical harvest, shipment, and preservation are the largest historical qualities impacting what produce we eat today, bar none. Are apples the best fruit in the world for nutrition, taste, or balance of the two? Heck no, but they are easy to harvest, last months if treated decently, and ship heartily. But pawpaws are dreadful for this, they’re soft, only ripen on the tree, and rot within days. The thing about the pawpaw is, to me it shows what could have happened to the tomato, had it not been able to been canned. Tomatoes are fussy little love apples, and ship terribly (unless you turn them into mealy mauve parodies of themselves with fish genetics) but we love them. Eating tomatoes never would have been widely adopted if preserving them hadn’t been relatively easy. (Yes, they were eaten only cooked for years and years, eating them raw is pretty modern.) Pawpaw can’t be preserved except for pulping and freezing, and the wide availability of frozen foods (and the means to store them in your house) is only about 60 years old in America. The pawpaw is obscure because it sucks at grocery store life. Still, maybe with time (and the frozen foods lobby working on us) they’ll become more commercially viable.

The second thing is that pawpaws have an oral history that is at once universal to the Midwest, but still a secret. Everywhere he went, someone knew about them, how to find them, how to eat them. And everyone knows the song. But they were otherwise forgotten pretty evenly inside the Midwest. He hypothesizes it’s down to microgeography - pawpaws are thirsty and like the edges of creeks and rivers, and if you didn’t have your own woodlot with a crick to get swole up now and again, you weren’t going to get that way down yonder pawpaw patch. If you didn’t have a patch, you’d never learn about them. If your parents even knew about them from their childhood - pawpaws need shade, and things were pretty deforested after the 40s. And I was a wandering child and my sister and spent a couple of summers eating wild black raspberries out of the creekless woods near my house and I never saw a one. ‘Cause I’d have probably tried to eat it.

Also, sideways to pawpaws, I learned Johnny Appleseed was sowing apples all up and down America in the hopes that after his death we’d all have the ability to get blasted coast to coast, because no one ate apples for food back then, it was just for alcohol production… That’s not what they told me in preschool! D:

Gorgeous cover design also.

[Gary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve read a number of what I call “personal food narratives” and this one was a solid 2.5 stars (rounded up to 3 because 2 stars seemed too low). There were some interesting tidbits, characters, and historical findings. Overall, I felt like it was maybe too packed. A chapter, or even section, that starts in one geographic location with one focus zigzags back and forth to previous locations and thoughts. It’s slightly disorienting.

And for as much as it jumps around, it is very circular in its message. People don’t know pawpaws, except people who do. Pawpaws are wild and free, but we should cultivate them in an orchard. Or should we?

At the end of the book, there are a number of short passage that are thinly tied together. It seems like the content get thinner and thinner as it goes on. It’s like the author was either just throwing disparate info in together, or was getting worn out from writing his first book. He talks about some pawpaw gelato at the end as what he thought to be a letdown in a way—like there should be something more special about it, but it’s just another product alongside other products. When I think about it, it’s the same feeling I have about the book.

[Moss · Rating 1 out of 5]

My favorite reviews of this book:

"Do you wanna hear what a bunch of nobodies think a pawpaw tastes like?"

"They really will give a James Beard Award to anybody, huh?"

I started this book during pawpaw season, a time of year I clear my schedule and take off work to tromp through the woods, collecting the pawpaws I've spent all year scouting. I bought this book without hesitation, and when I started it early September, I hoped to finish it before the Athens Pawpaw Festival, my favorite annual pilgrimage. Here we are three months later, and this was my least favorite book of the year.

Pawpaw lacked any analytical framework or cohesion, failing to be scientific, historical, anthropological, or even interesting. To start, it needed to be 100 pages shorter, as it maintained a filler to content ratio of 10:1 throughout the work. Every page, I asked "How did the editor let this in?" If I were editing, here's what I would cut:

- Introductions of characters who are present for three paragraphs. (This was the most egregious as these people had no knowledge of or relation to pawpaws, and he included their nothing of a commentary every other page)
- Anytime someone tries a pawpaw for the first time and describes its flavor the same way it was described by every person prior
- Documentations of what he ate for lunch
- Documentations of what roads he traveled on
- Ramblings on whatever topic someone wanted to talk about after they answered no to the question of if they'd heard of pawpaws
- Every time he went pawpaw hunting and got an unremarkable yield. That's fine, just don't remark.
- Speculation! Speculation! Speculation! Research it or cut it.
- Accounts of whether pawpaws were present at any given farmers market
- Anecdotes about historical figures mentioned just to conclude "they probably ate a pawpaw."

If this content (a generous designation) was grouped into sections, organized by topic, it might have been a bearable reading experience. No. Part three is organized by place, so it reads as a series of travel notes, bouncing incoherently between these meaningless anecdotes with no context or direction.

Parts 1 and 2, merely suffered from the same political atrophy as the rest of popular nonfiction. For example, he has a positive, uncritical view of Lewis and Clark. He has a whole chapter on Thomas Jefferson with no mention of him being a slave-owning rapist. He describes Washington's relationship with his enslaved chef as one of care. He tries and fails to connect why, when pawpaws were such important fruits to pre-settler native populations, they're often unknown among modern indigenous groups: no mention of colonial genocide, no historical analysis of boarding schools' role in cultural erasure, no discussion of deforestation projects or restricted land access. Not even agribusiness was implicated in the erasure of the pawpaw. And with no critical analysis of how the pawpaw was "forgotten," its hope for return stems not from land back, reforestation, or developing relations with the land, but...

Commodification. Andrew Moore's goal for the pawpaw, his wildest dream, is to have pawpaws become a commodity, available in every grocery store in America. This is why he includes reaction after reaction from people with no connection to the fruit. You need not cherish or steward the pawpaw as a potential customer, only buy it. This is why we don't hear from permaculture farmers or foresters, only row croppers using the same extractive monocultures, just cut and paste pawpaw. He views pawpaws as a technical problem which needs a little more breeding, a little more fine-tuning of flavor and shipability, to reach the glory of commodification. And once we get there, finally, Dole Fruit Company can sell pawpaw juice.

I'll let Andrew Moore say in his own words what it feels like to begin to achieve this goal after having pawpaw ice cream at a local restaurant:
"I'm not sure what I was expecting ... streamers and confetti dropping when I spotted it-but instead it's just a regular pint of pawpaw gelato alongside all the other flavors. Nothing out of the ordinary."

It is honestly so sad Moore wasted 250 pages trying to fit the ephemeral, beautiful, untamable pawpaw into American capitalism. Skip this book.

[Cheryl Gatling]

This spring, for the first time, I ordered some mail-order pawpaw trees. While waiting for them to arrive, and worrying about whether they would survive in my area (upstate New York), I saw this book, and I snatched it up.

Andrew Moore had his first taste of pawpaw fruit in the woods of Ohio, and became fascinated with all things pawpaw. Being a journalist, he did what journalists do. He researched the history of the tree and its fruit, and he traveled the country interviewing anyone who had anything to do with pawpaws. This book might indeed be subtitled, "More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About America's Forgotten Fruit." But I did want to know.

Pawpaws are native to the Americas. They are a tropical-like plant, but they flourish in a temperate climate. Historically they grew as an understory tree, in the woods of bottomlands, along rivers. The trees spread by suckers, forming "pawpaw patches." The fruit is soft and fleshy, tastes something like banana, but has big seeds in it. It doesn't keep.

Native Americans ate pawpaws. Poor country people ate pawpaws. In the fall they would go out in the woods and bring home a basketful. They were enough a part of people's lives that a folksong, "Way Down Yonder in the Pawpaw Patch," was written about them.

Then people stopped living in the country so much, and stopped going out into the woods, and much of the woods was paved over, and pawpaws disappeared from people's consciousness. Most people today don't know what one is, have never seen one, and never eaten one.

The fruit had never been cultivated. People had only ever eaten the ones that grew wild. But a few people have been trying to change that. A few people have been performing selective breeding to develop the biggest, sweetest, most reliable varieties. A few people have been tending pawpaw orchards and selling the fruit. A few towns have been hosting pawpaw festivals, to share their enthusiasm about this unique fruit.

And Andrew Moore tells you about all of them. I think he has included every conversation he had with every person he met, but that's OK. This book is a love-fest, and it is full of hope. It confirmed me in my decision to plant pawpaws, and made me excited to be a part of the coming pawpaw renaissance.

[Lisa Roney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Andy Moore was a student of mine, so I'm not trying to be objective, but this wonderful book should be on the reading list of every foodie out there, and of many others who enjoy cultural history and commentary about the mystery of what people want and how they behave. Moore tracks his own experiences learning about the pawpaw and then gradually becoming more and more of a fan of a fruit that is native to large swaths of the U.S., is easy to grow and pest-resistant, and that tastes yummy fresh and in all kinds of concoctions, including breads, ice creams, and beers.

The book is rich in sensuous detail about both the fruit and its related foods, but also about the landscapes and people that Moore encounters as he explores the history and geographic range of the pawpaw. He tours around the middle and eastern parts of the country, visiting orchards, festivals, and the wild patches where the pawpaw has always thrived and helped wanderers and pioneers of all sorts get a taste of something sweet when lost and near starvation or locals to just have a lark on a pleasant day. The parts about pawpaw aficionados--those who are making efforts to grow and promote pawpaws more widely--were interesting and informative, but I especially loved the third section of the book the, where Moore ties historical stories and sites to the current state of pawpaw affairs. Moore's social criticism is gentle, yet articulate and pointed: why isn't the pawpaw better known and better valued across the country? There is no hard answer, but Moore's book should do a lot to help spread the word. I can't wait to get a chance to taste one myself.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Part natural history of the pawpaw, part Americana travelogue, it covers the author’s journeys to Appalachian backyards and commercial nurseries and gives them equal weight. It’s a light read, easy to break into smaller sections if you’re short on time.

Reading it made me happy. There’s a lot of fun tidbits about the fruit, and each region it grows is given it’s due. Maybe I’m so fond of the book because the author sounds like he had a great time driving around, talking to folks, and tasting local food. It comes through in the writing. The author feels a jolt of excitement as he sees a tree even at the end of his long journey, and you, the reader, can relate because the joy is felt through his writing.

I’m still happy a day after finishing it. I want to find out more. I want to plant a tree. But most of all, I want a pawpaw.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do you want to know what a bunch of nobodies think pawpaws taste like? If so, this is the book for you. If that doesn't sound fun then avoid this book at all costs. Yet another book that would have been better serviced as a longer magazine article or a segment in a newspaper.

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

You need to be very interested in paw paws to fully enjoy this book.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little bit of Pawpaw knowledge, a whole lot of Pawpaw culture, 100% Pawpaw appreciation all while traveling across the Eastern United States to find the allusive perfect pawpaw. The story became repetitive and I wasn't interested in the quest to make pawpaw a commercial success. I did catch the pawpaw fever which can only be cured by going to the Pawpaw patch, picking up the pawpaw, and puttin' it in my pocket.

[Bernard Lavallée · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a comprehensive book on pawpaws and it is very well written. The first two sections of the book were entertaining and were full of pawpaw facts. However, in the third part, the author travels through the pawpaw belt (US states where you used to find lots of pawpaws) and these chapters became redundant and a chore to read. I would still definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about this fruit.

[Marissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sorry to say my library loan expired before I could finish this! I got about 70% of the way through. While it was interesting, I find my interest level in pawpaws could probably have been satisfied by a much shorter work....😆

[Lisa Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I've read an entire book about a fruit I have never tasted. Time to go out there and get one this fall.

[Alexander Tas · Rating 3 out of 5]

[image error]

[Ciara Mulcahy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome story and really informative. I cannot wait to try paw paws. Literally have told so many friends fun facts about paw paws from this book. September cannot come soon enough, just kidding. But looking forward to foraging!

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first tried pawpaws a few years ago at a local farmers' market. Although I grew up in pawpaw country, so to speak, I don't recall ever encountering them as a child. I suspect that this has a lot to do with their "harvest" season. I went to the woods with my dad every spring to hunt for morel mushrooms, and in the fall to gather hazelnuts, hickory nuts, and black walnuts. Pawpaw season would have been late summer/early fall, while it was still quite hot and humid and the underbrush and poison ivy rampant; this wasn't a season that my father would take time off work to go to the woods. In any case, I think the fruit is wonderful, although the fragrance of ripe pawpaws is almost overwhelming...my car, after returning from the farmers' market with just a few of them, smelled of pawpaws for days. Andrew Moore's adventures searching for both wild and cultivated pawpaws were fascinating and inspirational. Now I want to go to a pawpaw festival myself!

[Israel Golden · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did get me excited about Pawpaws but man, it could have been about 1/3 the length.

What I disliked: Rather than having his journey around the Pawpaw belt have any kind of narrative arc with a satisfying conclusion it was the same story over and over again. Moore arrives in a rural part of the pawpaw belt - he asks the locals if the know about pawpaws. Some do some don’t. Sprinkle a few interesting tidbits/factoids. Rinse, repeat.

What I liked: I appreciated reading about the history of the fruit, how its wild fruit peers (blueberries) were domesticated, and why this remains elusive for the pawpaw. I also liked hearing about the pawpaw’s champions and celebrations (eg festivals) throughout time. Finally, I much appreciated the resources about nurseries and cultivars in the back of the book.

In the end, there’s a lot of great info on pawpaws but Moore really needed a better editor.

[Adam Schweigert · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Good information overall and some really great anecdotes but the book seems to ramble and could have probably used a bit of a tighter edit.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had very high hopes going into this book, but ultimately was left feeling very unfulfilled. One of the things I really liked about this book was how it highlighted the connections between food, history, culture, and heritage. But in many ways, this book felt scattered. There was really no central narrative beyond "author became aware of pawpaws and then wanted to learn everything about them." The lengths Moore went to for his research are absolutely admirable; the sheer number of people Moore spoke to, sought out for his research, and spent time with highlights how many people have an appreciation and love for pawpaws. But after a certain point, the book becomes extremely repetitive. The book is broken down into sections, and then more specific chapters within those sections. However, the writing seems to meander through topics, one moment talking about history, then wandering into growing practices and cultivation, before circling back to whatever was supposed to be the subject of the chapter.
I think I partially set myself up for failure going into this book. As a native Ohioan who has also worked on projects in Appalachia, I wonder if I was projecting my own ideals and hopes onto what this book would be. I also wonder if this book is better enjoyed by those who have already been pawpaw fans for some time. One thing is for sure: come next September, I will absolutely be seeking out pawpaws in my area.
Maybe I'll enjoy this book more by reading it with a glass of pawpaw beer or a scoop of pawpaw ice cream.

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite having grown up in Ohio in the foothills of Appalachia, I have never eaten a pawpaw. If I have seen the trees, I had no idea what it was. This book was interesting and made me want to go pawpaw hunting. The idea that the trees could be hidden in plain sight was fascinating. The tree itself is interesting as well. From how they pollinate to the structure of the fruit and the many uses it has. I am going to have to keep an eye out for these trees this spring and summer.

A fun little anecdote to go along with this reading:
I was telling my husband, who originally hails from Indianapolis, about this book. I was explaining how pawpaw are pollinated by carrion flies and things of that nature. We were sitting in the car and I was looking up pictures of the plant and I finally was like "Maybe I've seen these and didn't know it." My husband goes "Let me see." So I showed him some pictures of the flowers. He goes, "Wait, do the flowers stink?" I was like "Yeah, they say there's a smell because of the type of things that pollinate them." He says, "Oh! I've seen those. I thought 'Why in the world would anyone plant such a nasty tree?' "

Friends, my city boy husband has seen a pawpaw tree. I am insanely jealous.

[Lydia G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I appreciate the existence of this book (and the kind friend who gave it to me) more than the substance. It didn’t seem like Andy could decide if he was writing a narrativeless geo/ethnographic summary of every mention of Asimina triloba in written history or an account of his own journey through the southeast and midwest U.S. in search of that information. Either way, there wasn’t a cogent thesis. You have to be predisposed to an interest in pawpaw to enjoy this, and fortunately I’m sick over them. But this book could’ve been greatly improved (in my own opinion) if at least the “traveling over the U.S.” portion read more like a voyage of discovery and less like a guy you don’t know anything about (he refers to himself as Andy only once, I believe) yelling as many facts as he can remember at you in a loud bar. Even if you like the topic he’s spouting off about, it’s just not the most enjoyable experience.

[Robbie Mata · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judging from the comments I've read, people's attention spans are changing, and perhaps most can't tolerate a long(ish) book about the United States's largest indigenous fruit, the pawpaw. But that's okay. Like the folks who are struck with pawpaw madness, the type of person who will enjoy this book likely loves the outdoors and is deeply interested in the fruit. Perhaps this person is a forager. I, for one, learned about pawpaw's just last year after watching them grow all season in Columbus, OH. In September, they ripened, and I was hooked. When I discovered Andrew Moore's book (by chance!) in a local library, I knew it was a must-read, and I was not disappointed. A fascinating, deeply instructive read.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thorough. Too thorough. An interesting read for a pawpaw nut like myself but nevertheless repetitive and felt haphazardly organized. Parts I and II were worth reading for the history of the fruit and its modern cultivation, but the descriptions of where the author did and did not find pawpaws across the nation in Part III dragged on and on and seemed to be sets of paragraphs cobbled together without much connection except that pawpaws were eaten there or not. I most enjoyed finding out about other unusual edibles, such as the maypop, Russian seaberry, spciebush, mayapple, and cushaws. Wouldn't recommend the whole book to anyone, though I'd say pawpaw fans should peruse the first two sections, though not read them in their entirety.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s amazing that a 250 page book can be solely about one fruit with basically zero tangents. The pawpaw, a fruit I have never seen, much less tasted, is the central subject, and I was fascinated. Andrew Moore writes about its history and current status throughout its native range of 26 U.S. states, but mainly in the “Pawpaw Belt” region. He touches on a lot of interesting aspects of the fruit, namely it’s potential (or lack thereof) for commercialization; it’s varied tastes, sizes, # of seeds; how its popularity and how its prevalence have ebbed and flowed over time. I especially enjoyed Moore’s adventures traveling wide distances hunting for pawpaw and uncovering a sort of folk culture at the same time.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this cultural history of pawpaws, a fruit I had heard of but never tasted. Moore intertwines current interest in pawpaws with his own interest in promoting the fruit, along with the pawpaw's place in American history. He interviews farmers, bystanders, visits breweries, farms, orchards, scientists and attend pawpaw festivals in search of his material.

The writing is thoughtful, if sometimes a bit recursive for my taste, circling back to earlier themes, but this approach does keep the readers' interest.

[David Lor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed this book even though the closest I've gotten to eating a pawpaw is feasting on a cherimoya or two. (Though I did know about pawpaws prior to this book.) The history of the fruit, and current attempts at cultivating it and bringing it to a wider audience really shine. However, an otherwise very good book, it gets bogged down in some repetitive points as he visits more than a handful of people and seemingly relates the same story about pawpaw events, pawpaw foods, and people's vague memories of a strange fruit.

[Jude Morrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moore's narrative is hard to define - something of a microhistory, something of a memoir, something of a foodie travelogue, it meanders from past to present to future as well as state to state. For those who are truly interested in pawpaws (the history, the commercial prospects, current endeavours to produce cultivars, how it's hunted in the wild, and of course the pawpaw fans scattered throughout its range and beyond), it's a good read. Recommended for those who like long rambles about pawpaw (which includes me)!