A Slice Of Life

West of Magdalena and Datil on U.S. 60 sits that New Mexico community with the unforgettable name of Pie Town.

When author Lynne Hinton and her husband stopped there in the early 1990s, they discovered the diner didn’t have pies.

“How odd. No pie in Pie Town. I held on to that,” Hinton recalled in a phone interview from North Carolina, where’s she at a camp for developmentally disabled adults.

Now, almost 20 years later, she has written a novel whose title is, you guessed, it, “Pie Town” and it is set in the Catron County town.

All of the characters are fictional, including forgetful Oris Whitsett. Oris, covered in mud, is only wearing a shirt and socks when he’s humorously introduced to readers.

Longtime friend and neighbor Millie Watson politely asks Oris, “You forget something?” His daughter Marlena uses rougher language: “Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, Daddy, have you gone and lost your mind for good?”

They are three of a town full of Anglos, Hispanics and Native Americans who sweeten Pie Town.

Two new arrivals stir the plot: Father George Morris, a Catholic priest who arrives on his first assignment, and a young hitchhiker named Trina.

“When I started the book … I was thinking about communities and how they often think of themselves as one way whereas newcomers experience the community as another way,” said Hinton, an Albuquerque resident.

Having served as a minister, she understands how community is an important aspect of ministry and church life. Hinton is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.

Currently, she is writing most of the time and when she’s not, she’s teaching writing classes called “Write to Soul.” The idea is to think of writing as a spiritual discipline.

Today’s Pie Town has a cafe that serves pies, and after the conclusion of Hinton’s novel the book has a page with a recipe for the Pie-O-Neer Cafe’s Pecan Oat Pie.

“Pie Town” is the first volume in what may be a series. That will depend, she said, on how many copies of the book are sold.

The second novel, due out next summer, has a mystery element and has a working title of “Lightning Strikes Pie Town.”

Hinton’s previous fiction included the best-sellers “Friendship Cake” and “Wedding Cake.”

Lynne Hinton discusses, signs “Pie Town” at 3 p.m. today at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande NW; at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 2, at Barnes & Noble, Mesilla Valley Mall, 700 S. Telshor, Las Cruces; and at 6:30 p.m. July 14 at Esther Bone Library, 950 Pinetree Road SE, Rio Rancho.