A book about love and friendship. Kingsolver always creates believable and interesting characters who enthral the reader and this story is no different. Taylor does not want to get pregnant young and live in the small town she is from but fate deals her a blow on her travels by suddenly making her the guardian of an abandoned baby girl. A lovely story with interesting characters who show the true meaning of friendship to each other.
Plucky Taylor Greer grows up poor in rural Kentucky with two goals: to avoid pregnancy and to get away. She succeeds on both counts when she buys an old car and heads west. But midway across the country motherhood catches up with her when she becomes the guardian of an abandoned baby girl she calls Turtle. In Tuscon they encounter an extraordinary array of people, and with their help, Taylor builds herself and her sweet, stunned child a life.
Barbara Kingsolver’s thirteen books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction include the novels The Bean Trees and the international bestseller The Poisonwood Bible which, amongst other accolades, won the 2005 Penguin/Orange Reading Group Book of the Year award. Her most recent novel is The Lacuna, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction.
Fellow novelist KERRY REICHS on BARBARA KINGSOLVER
After you read The Bean Trees, you’ll run to the bookstore to buyPigs in Heaven and Animal Dreams. I snap up Kingsolver’s novels from used bookstores so I have copies at the ready if I meet someone who has not yet had the pleasure. Observant and canny in character, Kingsolver’s women have heart and looking through their eyes opens mine. I read these books with a pen so I can easily return to favorite underlined phrases.
