Pat Willard takes readers on a journey into the regional nooks and crannies of American cuisine where WPA writers—including Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and Nelson Algren, among countless others—were dispatched in 1935 to document the roots of our diverse culinary cuisine.

America Eats!, as the project was entitled, was never published. With the unpublished WPA manuscript as her guide, Willard visits the sites of American foods' past glory to explore whether American traditional cuisine is still as healthy and vibrant today as it was then.