Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Click illustration for larger image. "MY LIFE IN FRANCE" By Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme Knopf ($25.95)

How did a self-described "6-foot-2-inch, 36-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian" become the woman who not only made Americans fall in love with French food but also helped to revolutionize American cooking in the mid-20th century?

In short, how did Julia Child become "Julia Child"?

It's all here in her highly readable posthumous memoir that chronicles not only her discovery of the culinary glories of postwar France but also her transformation into a confident chef, teacher, and ultimately apostle of French cooking to millions of Americans.

The book is actually written by Julia Child's grand-nephew, Alex Prud'homme, a nonfiction writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker. It is based on extensive interviews he had with his great-aunt before her death at 91 in 2004.

Julia had thought about doing the book herself for years, but finally in late 2003 she told Prud'homme, "All right, Dearie, maybe we should work on it together."

Happily, the voice in the book seems authentically Julia's:

Cheerful, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, with a touch of the giddy American college girl on her junior year abroad who describes the five years she lived in Paris with her husband as a time "in which I found my true calling and had such fun that I hardly stopped moving long enough to catch my breath."

Born into a prominent family in Pasadena (a staunch liberal, she would be at odds with her conservative father all her life), Julia McWilliams graduated from Smith College, reluctantly returned to her hometown and seemed destined for a life of spinsterhood until World War II broke out. She saw her chance at escape, moved to Washington, and she was hired by the Office of Strategic Services and promptly shipped off to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where she processed top-secret intelligence data and met Paul Child, a deeply cultured man who relished French wine and food.

They married, and when Child was posted to Paris in 1948 to work at the United States Information Service at the American Embassy, Julia's destiny was set in motion. On her very first day in France, she and her husband lunched at a restaurant at Rouen en route to Paris that she describes as an "epiphany" of sole meuniere, oysters and Pouilly-Fume.

After that, Julia embraced all things French with a passion. Once she and her husband had settled into an unheated Left Bank apartment, Julia spent hours at the Rue De Bourgogne marketplace in a determined effort to learn French cooking.

"All sorts of delices are spouting out of [Julia's] finger ends like sparks out of a pinwheel," her husband happily reported to his brother. Her love of the French people was uncomplicated and complete:

"Oh, how I adored sweet and natural France, with its human warmth, wonderful smells, graciousness, coziness and freedom of spirit.''

But life wasn't all leisurely weekends motoring out to Fontainebleau or wine-soaked evenings at ancient French restaurants. Studies at L'?cole du Cordon Bleu followed, a period she describes as nothing short of grueling.

The school's owner was "disagreeable" (a rare criticism from Julia, who usually had only nice things to say about people, especially French people), and after 18 months, she inexplicably failed her final exam. But encouraged by the school's top chef, Max Bugnard, she retook it and received her diploma.

Then along with two Frenchwomen, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, Julia started a cooking school which eventually led to "a cookbook project."

After years of work, the massive 700-page tome was rejected by Houghton Mifflin -- twice -- but eventually published by Knopf in 1961 as "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

The rest, of course, is history. Fame and fortune enabled the Childs to build a stone house in Provence where they could rest and recharge themselves between Julia's television and cookbook projects. But the best part of this book is the early Paris part. It's hard, in fact, not to be envious and a little sad because that kind of adventure is not possible in today's Paris.

Yet, we can enjoy "My Life in France" for what it is -- an engaging, endearing love letter to the country Julia regarded as her "spiritual homeland."