One of my very favorite things to do while traveling is to eat as much local food as possible, whether it’s whatever’s fresh and seasonal in that time and place, or the regional food traditions and specialities. In my book on literary geography and King’s Maine, I have a whole chapter devoted to food, including a foundation of Maine foodways in general and fan development of King-inspired recipes that build upon and reflect these traditions, including the several recipes I’ve cooked along the way from Theresa Carle-Sanders’ excellent cookbook Castle Rock Kitchen: Wicked Good Recipes from the World of Stephen King. 

Food in literature is so important when it comes to worldbuilding and inviting readers to imagine themselves in the fictional world in a tactile and consumable way, and these recipes often provide us with a chance not just to recreate a specific moment but to actively negotiate key themes and big questions. 

For example, one of the most memorable recipes in Carle-Sanders’ Castle Rock Kitchen is her Blueberry Cheesecake Pie recipe inspired by King’s The Body (in the 1982 collection Different Seasons). The blueberry pie scene in The Body isn’t exactly one that’s likely to make the reader particularly hungry: in Gordie’s campfire story “The Revenge of Lard Ass Hogan,” Hogan is in a competitive pie-eating contest, but he has no plan to win. Instead, he gorges on the pies for the express purpose of regurgitating them all over everyone he can hit, which kicks off a chain reaction of other competitors and spectators vomiting all over themselves and one another. 

In developing a blueberry pie recipe inspired by The Body, Carle-Sanders reflects upon and reframes this context, creating something delicious with her blueberry-topped cheesecake pie. This is a rich and flavorful dessert, rather than a moment of culinary abjection. There is also a bittersweetness to the blueberries here—after all, Ray Brower was out picking wild blueberries when he was hit by a train, the catalyst that sets Gordie and his friends on a parallel journey to that of Ace Merrill and his gang. Taken together, blueberries in The Body have a flavor of both lost innocence (Brower’s death) and adolescent resistance (Hogan’s revenge, however gross it may be). 

And of course, wild Maine blueberries are different from any other blueberries. They’re smaller than commercially cultivated blueberries, with a much richer flavor. One of the adventures we had while in Maine this time around was a guided tour through Acadia National Park, where we learned that visitors are allowed to pick and eat the wild blueberries they find there, an invitation to know this special place in a deliciously consumable way. 

We indulged in two different slices of blueberry pie on our Maine travels: one at Dysart’s Truck Stop in Hermon and one at the West Street Cafe in Bar Harbor. I had the blueberry pie at Dysart’s on my last trip as well. I thought of it frequently in the intervening years and as I dug into my research on literary tourism and others’ experiences traveling King’s Maine, it came up a LOT: It seems like everyone who goes wandering through King’s Maine sooner or later finds themselves ordering a slice of Maine blueberry pie at Dysart’s, usually with a nice hot cup of coffee. This was our first visit to Bar Harbor and after the Acadia tour, we had lunch at the West Street Cafe, where we both went all in with the Downeast Special: lobster, clam chowder, fries, coleslaw, and blueberry pie. 

Both pies were fresh, homemade, and delicious. The Dysart’s pie was a familiar return for me, while the West Street Cafe pie was a new adventure. We had the Dysart’s pie chilled, while we had the West Street Cafe pie warmed and topped with Giffords vanilla ice cream. We had the Dysart’s pie in the homey hustle-bustle of the truck stop dining room, while at the West Street Cafe we had a table by the window looking out toward Fisherman’s Bay. They were two very different pie experiences, each wonderfully unforgettable in their own ways, and both incredibly delicious, a sweet and flaky taste of Maine.