Juana, a working-class, single mother, decides to take a job at a local Japanese restaurant. Against all odds, she fights to achieve her dream of becoming a sushi chef.

"While a luscious layer cake may exemplify the towering glory of Southern baking, like everything about the American South, baking is far more complicated than it seems. Rebecca Sharpless here weaves a brilliant chronicle, vast in perspective and entertaining in detail, revealing how three global food traditions-Indigenous American, European, and African-collided with and merged in the economies, cultures, and foodways of the South to create what...