Bel Canto author Anne Patchett loves Petoskey

Best-selling author Anne Patchett praises the Petoskey area for its independent bookstore, McLean & Eakin, its hotels, dining, artisan food purveyors and  cherry pie.

An excerpt:

I drove my rental car down two-lane highways that were riddled with fruit stands, vegetable stands, pie stands, all of them nestled in orchards. Maybe I could have driven past one offer of homemade cherry pie, maybe even three or four, but the fifth time I saw the sign I pulled over. I gobbled down my slice by the side of the road: tart cherries, flaky crust, none of that viscous red slime that gave the pie a bad name in the first place. I can't tell you where that particular stand was, and it wouldn't matter anyway. In the intervening years I've eaten a great deal of pie while standing by the side of the road in Michigan. It's all been good. This was only the beginning.

That first afternoon when I pulled into town I was short on time and sticky from pie. I was tired and distracted. I had work to do and still another plane to catch. But that didn't mean I was blind. There I was in Petoskey. The houses were wide of porch and steep of gable, many of them painted in the colors favored by seventh-grade girls. Petunias dangled from window boxes. Below the town the sun spread its diamond light over Lake Michigan, over the boats and the swimmers and the shore. The small downtown was a throwback to some simpler idea of American vacations, a couple of ice cream stores that sold taffy and fudge, a gift shop with T-shirts in the window that said lake. Imagine the cast of "Mad Men" driving out to Michigan in wood-paneled station wagons for the summer. Frank Sinatra playing in the hotel bar. Sophisticated restaurants commingling with pie shops. The world was leafy and dappled, quiet and cool. Within 10 minutes I started to wonder how I could spend the rest of my life in Petoskey.


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