Fannie Ware, long known as the queen of the crab-picking industry, now hopes to also be well known as an author.

This lady began her professional crab picking at age 13. “They gave me a knife for a right-handed person. I couldn’t do very much with it since I’m left-handed. My grandmother took care of that. She gave me the proper knife.”

At the peak of her career in 1955 Fannie picked 100 pounds of crabmeat in one day, “a possible U.S. record.” She pursued her chosen field of work for 65 years. Now she is retired and has published a cookbook. 

“It was from the highest authority, my God, that I decided to do this. Here I am older and no longer picking crabs to make money. So here (the book) is and I am selling them myself.” Fannie says she has been collecting cookbooks for a long time and had some experience in putting cookbooks together. In 1982 her church, Zion Baptist at Cardinal, published a cookbook, and she was a large part of...