Prodigal Summer

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Overview

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the countryside, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. With the complexity that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama, and ideas that render it an inspiring work of fiction.

Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Following the phenomenal achievement of The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver has earned a reputation as a storyteller of deep compassion, wry humor, and moral conviction. Now her fifth novel, Prodigal Summer, reveals her to be in full possession of her gifts as she spins three poignant stories against the hardscrabble landscape of southern Appalachia, where creepers and Japanese beetles have exacted a toll on small farmers. Over the course of a long, hot summer, Kingsolver's big-hearted characters begin to grudgingly reconcile themselves with nature and find they can love one another, too.

At the center of this sprawling tale is a pack of coyotes that has wandered into the territory that park ranger Deanne Wolfe patrols in the aftermath of her divorce. For two years Wolfe has subsisted alone, her solitude proof that she didn't need marriage in the first place. The coyotes are her only companions until Eddie Bondo shows up, with a 30-30 rifle slung over his muscled shoulder, wearing a winning smirk. Within a few hours of meeting they are tearing off each other's clothes as they writhe across the plank floors of Wolfe's log cabin. She eventually discovers that Eddie is more than just a freelance hunter and lothario: He's on a bounty mission to catch and kill her precious coyotes.

Lusa Maluf Landowski faces a more wrenching choice between tending to her land and protecting her heart. A young widow burdened with a heavily mortgaged farm and ornery in-laws, she realizes it might be easier to mend her wounds if she moves on. And staying put would be a huge endeavor: Her barn needs a new roof, her tobacco plants aren't turning a profit, and she desperately craves companionship to fill the lonely hours at home. A few miles down the road, two elderly neighbors, Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley -- one a devotee of pesticides, the other an organic farmer -- lock horns over whether God intended humankind to meddle with the environment. He rips down her "No Spray Zone" sign, while she accuses him of hubris. Despite their intransigent positions, they feed off each other's ardor and draw inevitably closer together.

Erotic and poetic, Prodigal Summer is Kingsolver's most profoundly philosophical work. With prose that is as supple as a bobcat's tread, she paces deftly between each character's tale, as they search for deeper meaning in the natural world around them. Wolfe knows that by sheltering predators she's removed humankind from nature's equation and attempted to make a false Eden of the woods. Bondo, however, forces her to accept that she needs the companionship of her own species. Lusa and Garnett realize that to live off their land they need to cede it a certain respect. And by so doing, they awaken to a richer connection with the earth and a renewed belief in the essential importance of love.

With a master's assured cadence, Kingsolver winds between these narratives, sprinkling them with telling details about Kentucky's flora and fauna. Moths, goats, and even snapping turtles are captured in their lush splendor. Kingsolver cleverly uses their behavioral patterns as a counterpoint to the petty wrangling of her human characters. Ultimately, though, she affirms that humans are only one link in the chain of life. Prodigal Summer offers a pointedly eloquent argument for the necessity to live within nature's strictures. In this regard, Kingsolver proves an adept moralist, one determined to raise our awareness of the prodigal ways we squander our greatest inheritance: the world in which we live.

--John Freeman

Buffalo News

As lush, rich and abundant as nature itself ... Prodigal Summer is quietly breathtaking, and its vista awe-inspiring.

More Reviews (1) Fewer Reviews

From The Critics

Prodigal Summer is full of ... tenderness, humour and earthy spirituality ... Kingsolver's dialogue is absolutely natural, often funny, and sometimes heartbreaking.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780060959036
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 10/28/2001
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 464
Sales rank: 71,190
Lexile: 0870L (what's this?)
Series: Harper Perennial
Product dimensions: 5.31 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 1.04 (d)

Meet the Author

Barbara Kingsolver

Equally at home with poetry, novels, and nonfiction narratives, Barbara Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a love of nature, a writer's discipline, and a strong sense of social justice.

Biography

According to the biography on her website, Barbara Kingsolver began writing around the age of nine. Her early "oeuvre" included poems, short stories, and essays, including one noteworthy piece on school safety that was published in the local newspaper, helped to pass a local bond issue, and netted the author a $25 savings bond -- "on which she expected to live comfortably into adulthood."

Kingsolver left her native Kentucky to attend DePauw University on a piano scholarship; but intellectual curiosity (the same quality that informs her writing) prompted her to transfer from the music school to the college of liberal arts where she majored in biology. Immediately after college, she traveled in Greece and France and returned to the U.S. to pursue her master's degree in science from the University of Arizona. She worked for a while as a science writer for the university before becoming a freelance journalist. In 1986 she won an Arizona Press Club Award.

Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees, was composed entirely at night during a period of chronic, pregnancy-related insomnia. Published in 1988, this story of a young woman transplanted from Kentucky to Tucson was reviewed enthusiastically by critics. " As clear as air," rhapsodized The New York Times Book Review. "It is the southern novel taken west, its colors as translucent and polished as one of those slices of rose agate from a desert shop." Readers, too, proclaimed the story a delight.

Since then, Kingsolver has produced a string of bestselling novels, including Pigs in Heaven, The Poisonwood Bible (an Oprah's Book club selection), and Prodigal Summer. She has also authored collections of her poems (Another America), short stories (Homeland), and essays (Small Wonders); as well as nonfiction narratives like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Good To Know

In 2008, Kingsolver delivered the commencement address at Duke University, offering graduates advice on "How to be Hopeful."

She is a member of the Rock Bottom Remainders, a rock and roll band consisting of published writers, including Amy Tan, Matt Groening, Dave Barry, and Stephen King among others.

1. Date of Birth:
  
  April 8, 1955
2. Place of Birth:
  
  Annapolis, Maryland
1. Education:
  
  B.A., DePauw University, 1977; M.S., University of Arizona, 1981
2. Website:
  
  http://www.kingsolver.com

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Predators

Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.

If someone in this forest had been watching her -- a man with a gun, for instance, hiding inside a copse of leafy beech trees -- he would have noticed how quickly she moved up the path and how direly she scowled at the ground ahead of her feet. He would have judged her an angry woman on the trail of something hateful.

He would have been wrong. She was frustrated, it's true, to be following tracks in the mud she couldn't identify. She was used to being sure. But if she'd troubled to inspect her own mind on this humid, sunlit morning, she would have declared herself happy.

She loved the air after a hard rain, and the way a forest of dripping leaves fills itself with a sibilant percussion that empties your head of words. Her body was free to follow its own rules: a long-legged gait too fast for companionship, unself-conscious squats in the path where she needed to touch broken foliage, a braid of hair nearly as thick as her forearm falling over her shoulder to sweep the ground whenever she bent down. Her limbs rejoiced to be outdoors again, out of her tiny cabin whose log walls had grown furry and overbearing during the long spring rains. The frown was pure concentration, nothing more. Two years alone had given her a blind person's indifference to the look on her own face.

All morning the animal trail had led her uphill,ascending the mountain, skirting a rhododendron slick, and now climbing into an old-growth forest whose steepness had spared it from ever being logged. But even here, where a good oak-hickory canopy sheltered the ridge top, last night's rain had pounded through hard enough to obscure the tracks. She knew the animal's size from the path it had left through the glossy undergrowth of mayapples, and that was enough to speed up her heart. It could be what she'd been looking for these two years and more. This lifetime. But to know for sure she needed details, especially the faint claw mark beyond the toe pad that distinguishes canid from feline. That would be the first thing to vanish in a hard rain, so it wasn't going to appear to her now, however hard she looked. Now it would take more than tracks, and on this sweet, damp morning at the beginning of the world, that was fine with her. She could be a patient tracker. Eventually the animal would give itself away with a mound of scat (which might have dissolved in the rain, too) or something else, some sign particular to its species. A bear will leave claw marks on trees and even bite the bark sometimes, though this was no bear. It was the size of a German shepherd, but no house pet, either. The dog that had laid this trail, if dog it was, would have to be a wild and hungry one to be out in such a rain.

She found a spot where it had circled a chestnut stump, probably for scent marking. She studied the stump: an old giant, raggedly rotting its way backward into the ground since its death by ax or blight. Toadstools dotted the humus at its base, tiny ones, brilliant orange, with delicately ridged caps like open parasols. The downpour would have obliterated such fragile things; these must have popped up in the few hours since the rain stopped -- after the animal was here, then. Inspired by its ammonia. She studied the ground for a long time, unconscious of the elegant length of her nose and chin in profile, unaware of her left hand moving near her face to disperse a cloud of gnats and push stray hair out of her eyes. She squatted, steadied herself by placing her fingertips in the moss at the foot of the stump, and pressed her face to the musky old wood. Inhaled.

“Cat,” she said softly, to nobody. Not what she'd hoped for, but a good surprise to find evidence of a territorial bobcat on this ridge. The mix of forests and wetlands in these mountains could be excellent core habitat for cats, but she knew they mostly kept to the limestone river cliffs along the Virginia-Kentucky border. And yet here one was. It explained the cries she'd heard two nights ago, icy shrieks in the rain, like a woman's screaming. She'd been sure it was a bobcat but still lost sleep over it. No human could fail to be moved by such human-sounding anguish. Remembering it now gave her a shiver as she balanced her weight on her toes and pushed herself back upright to her feet.

And there he stood, looking straight at her. He was dressed in boots and camouflage and carried a pack larger than hers. His rifle was no joke -- a thirty-thirty, it looked like. Surprise must have stormed all over her face before she thought to arrange it for human inspection. It happened, that she ran into hunters up here. But she always saw them first. This one had stolen her advantage -- he'd seen inside her.“Eddie Bondo,” is what he'd said, touching his hat brim, though it took her a moment to work this out.

“What?”

“That's my name.”

“Good Lord,” she said, able to breathe out finally. “I didn't ask your name.”

“You needed to know it, though.”

Cocky, she thought. Or cocked, rather. Like a rifle, ready to go off. “What would I need your name for? You fixing to give me a story I'll want to tell later?” she asked quietly. It was a...

First Chapter

Chapter One

Predators

If someone in this forest had been watching her'a man with a gun, for instance, hiding inside a copse of leafy beech trees'he would have noticed how quickly she moved up the path and how direly she scowled at the ground ahead of her feet. He would have judged her an angry woman on the trail of something hateful.

All morning the animal trail had led her uphill, ascending the mountain, skirting a rhododendron slick, and now climbing into an old-growth forest whose steepness had spared it from ever being logged. But even here, where a good oak-hickory canopy sheltered the ridge top, last night's rain had pounded through hard enough to obscure the tracks. She knew the animal's size from the path it had left through the glossy undergrowth of mayapples, and that was enough to speed up her heart. It could be what she'd been looking for these two years and more. This lifetime. But to know for sure she needed details, especially the faint claw mark beyond the toe pad that distinguishes canid from feline. That would be the first thing to vanish in a hard rain, so it wasn't going to appear to her now, however hard she looked. Now it would take more than tracks, and on this sweet, damp morning at the beginning of the world, that was fine with her. She could be a patient tracker. Eventually the animal would give itself away with a mound of scat (which might have dissolved in the rain, too) or something else, some sign particular to its species. A bear will leave claw marks on trees and even bite the bark sometimes, though this was no bear. It was the size of a German shepherd, but no house pet, either. The dog that had laid this trail, if dog it was, would have to be a wild and hungry one to be out in such a rain.

She found a spot where it had circled a chestnut stump, probably for scent marking. She studied the stump: an old giant, raggedly rotting its way backward into the ground since its death by ax or blight. Toadstools dotted the humus at its base, tiny ones, brilliant orange, with delicately ridged caps like open parasols. The downpour would have obliterated such fragile things; these must have popped up in the few hours since the rain stopped'after the animal was here, then. Inspired by its ammonia. She studied the ground for a long time, unconscious of the elegant length of her nose and chin in profile, unaware of her left hand moving near her face to disperse a cloud of gnats and push stray hair out of her eyes. She squatted, steadied herself by placing her fingertips in the moss at the foot of the stump, and pressed her face to the musky old wood. Inhaled.

"Cat," she said softly, to nobody. Not what she'd hoped for, but a good surprise to find evidence of a territorial bobcat on this ridge. The mix of forests and wetlands in these mountains could be excellent core habitat for cats, but she knew they mostly kept to the limestone river cliffs along the Virginia-Kentucky border. And yet here one was. It explained the cries she'd heard two nights ago, icy shrieks in the rain, like a woman's screaming. She'd been sure it was a bobcat but still lost sleep over it. No human could fail to be moved by such human-sounding anguish. Remembering it now gave her a shiver as she balanced her weight on her toes and pushed herself back upright to her feet.

And there he stood, looking straight at her. He was dressed in boots and camouflage and carried a pack larger than hers. His rifle was no joke'a thirty-thirty, it looked like. Surprise must have stormed all over her face before she thought to arrange it for human inspection. It happened, that she ran into hunters up here. But she always saw them first. This one had stolen her advantage'he'd seen inside her."Eddie Bondo," is what he'd said, touching his hat brim, though it took her a moment to work this out.

"What?"

"That's my name."

"Good Lord," she said, able to breathe out finally. "I didn't ask your name."

"You needed to know it, though."

Cocky, she thought. Or cocked, rather. Like a rifle, ready to go off. "What would I need your name for? You fixing to give me a story I'll want to tell later?" she asked quietly. It was a tactic learned from her father, and the way of mountain people in general'to be quiet when most agitated.

"That I can't say. But I won't bite." He grinned'apologetically, it seemed. He was very much younger than she. His left hand reached up to his shoulder, fingertips just brushing the barrel of the rifle strapped to his shoulder. "And I don't shoot girls." "Well. Wonderful news."

Bite, he'd said, with the northerner's clipped i. An outsider, intruding on this place like kudzu vines. He was not very tall but deeply muscular in the way that shows up through a man's clothing, in his wrists and neck and posture: a build so accustomed to work that it seems tensed even when at ease. He said, "You sniff stumps, I see."

"I do."

"You got a good reason for that?"

"Yep."

"You going to tell me what it is?"

"Nope."

Another pause. She watched his hands, but what pulled on her was the dark green glint of his eyes. He observed her acutely, seeming to evaluate her hill-inflected vowels for the secrets behind her "yep" and "nope." His grin turned down on the corners instead of up, asking a curved parenthetical question above his right-angled chin. She could not remember a more compelling combination of features on any man she'd ever seen."You're not much of a talker," he said. "Most girls I know, they'll yap half the day about something they haven't done yet and might not get around to."

"Well, then. I'm not most girls you know..."

Reading Group Guide

IntroductionProdigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected. Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the countryside, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. With the complexity that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama, and ideas that render it an inspiring work of fiction. Discussion Questions

Why do you think this book is entitled Prodigal Summer? In what ways do all of the characters display "prodigal" characteristics? Who, or what, welcomes them home from their journeys?

Deanna is the self-appointed protector of coyotes and all predators. Is she disturbingnature's own ways of dealing with upsets? What about Garnett and his quest for a blight-free chestnut tree -- is this "good" for nature?

How does the relationship between Deanna and Eddie Bondo change them both? Should Deanna have told Eddie about the pregnancy? Do you think he already knew and that was one of the reasons he left when he did?

When Nannie and Garnett hug, a huge barrier between them drops and they both gain a basic understanding of each other's humanness and vulnerability. Do you think a romantic relationship between them will ensue? How much does Garnett's unrecognized longing for love and human contact account for the shift in his perception of Nannie and the greater world around him? What else influences the shift in Garnett? Does Nannie change as well?

The three major story lines are named "Predators," "Moth Love," and "Old Chestnuts." Why, besides acknowledging her respect for coyotes, spiders and other predatory creatures, are Deanna's chapters named "Predators?" Does her love of predators make her the "natural" lover of Eddie Bondo? How does Lusa's life mirror the life cycle of her beloved moths? How does her love of insects lead to her emergence from her cocoon of grief (i.e. her relationship to Crystal)? How do Garnett and Nannie remind you of "old chestnuts?" Are they extinct? Are they the few lone trees left alive after a blight? About the Author: Barbara Kingsolver, born on April 8, 1955, grew up "in the middle of an alfalfa field," in the part of eastern Kentucky that lies between the opulent horse farms and the impoverished coal fields. As a child, she wrote stories and essays and, beginning at the age of eight, kept a journal religiously.

Kingsolver left Kentucky to attend DePauw University in Indiana and, in the early eighties, she pursued graduate studies in biology and ecology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she received a Masters of Science degree. She has supported herself in a variety of jobs: as an archaeologist, copy editor, X-ray technician, housecleaner, biological researcher, and translator of medical documents. A position as a science writer for the University of Arizona soon led her into feature writing for journals and newspapers. Her numerous articles have appeared in a variety of publications, and many of them are included in the collection, High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. In 1986 she won an Arizona Press Club award for outstanding feature writing, and in 1995 Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, De Pauw University. From 1985 through 1987, Kingsolver was a freelance journalist by day, but she was writing fiction by night. Married to a chemist in 1985, she suffered from insomnia after becoming pregnant the following year. So at night Kingsolver sat in a closet and began to write The Bean Trees -- a novel about a young woman who leaves rural Kentucky and finds herself living in urban Tucson. The Bean Trees was enthusiastically received by critics. But, perhaps more important to Kingsolver, the novel was read with delight and, even, passion by ordinary readers. "A novel can educate to some extent," she told Publishers Weekly. "But first, a novel has to entertain -- that's the contract with the reader: you give me ten hours and I'll give you a reason to turn every page." The Bean Trees was followed by the collection, Homeland and Other Stories (1989), the novels Animal Dreams (1990), and Pigs in Heaven (1993), and the bestselling High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now and Never (1995). Kingsolver has also published a collection of poetry, Another America: Otra America (Seal Press, 1992, 1998), and a nonfiction book, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 (ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 1989, 1996). Prior to Prodigal Summer, her most recent work is The Poisonwood Bible -- a New York Times bestseller.Barbara Kingsolver presently lives outside of Tucson with her husband and her two daughters, Camille from a previous marriage, and Lily, who was born in 1996. When not writing or spending time with her family, Barbara gardens, cooks, hikes, works as an environmental activist and human-rights advocate, and plays hand drums and keyboards with her husband, guitarist Steven Hopp. Given that Barbara Kingsolver's work covers the psychic and geographical territories that she knows firsthand, readers often assume that her work is autobiographical. "My work is not about me. I don't ever write about real people. That would be stealing, first of all. And second of all, art is supposed to be better than that. If you want a slice of life, look out the window. An artist has to look out that window, isolate one or two suggestive things, and embroider them together with poetry and fabrication, to create a revelation. If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread."

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Anonymous

Posted October 26, 2011

Hard to get interested in...

Haven't finished it - cant get interested in it. Nothing to peak or hold my interest.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted May 2, 2010

Really Boring

I don't understand what all these other reviewers saw that I didn't see, but I thought this book was very boring. Way too many details about everything. I breezed over a lot to try and just get through it because I don't like to give up on a book, but I put this one away unfinished.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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caththegreat

Posted December 9, 2009

A terrific book altogether! It made me hungry for a sequel to discover how the many touching characters fared ultimately. The future is hinted at, temptingly. I wanted more.

All of the characters came alive as I followed their storylines, intersecting then beginning the underpinings of merging into families. The only part where I felt a trifle indoctrinated was with the need to preserve predatory animals. Deanna went on and on, reinforcing a zealous theme. I got it, I got it!
Each of the characters was totally enticing. Did Luba make a good profit on her lambs? Did Little Ricky get a girlfriend or become a world traveler? How did Crys fare after her mom died? Did Deanna stay with Nanny and raise the baby in town? Did the cayotes live in peace?

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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8447236

Posted August 11, 2011

Another winner from Kingsolver

I could not put this down! What a wonderful book about people learning to change and who find love in unexpected places. I will never look at nature the same way after reading this book. I learned so much. I highly recommend this fascinating story.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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2ufgators

Posted July 30, 2011

more from this reviewer

Summer Escape

Barbara Kingsolver is my goto summer read! This book transports you, educates, and shows you lives in appalachia filled with transformation. I would definately read Animal Vegetable Miracle to follow this one. Farmers' Market and canning jars here I come!
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Anonymous

Posted March 19, 2011

Brilliant!

The powerful writing and strong story line make this novel a wonderful reading experience. The characters are real and memorable and painted with perception and compassion. I wished the book never ended. Ms. Kingsolver is a truly gifted writer.
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mamieGS

Posted February 18, 2011

WASTE of Anybodys time!!!

I have read several of ms Kingsolver's book. Her best book by far it "The Poisonwood Bible" which I have read several times. But this book is totaly disappointing. She has three female characters who are so much alike that they are practically identical. She gets on her soapbox and lectures and preaches page after page...chapter after chapter..about the evils of nonorganic farming and killing wolves. OK...fine by me. But over 300 pages of that doesn't make a story and never will. Then...when you think the story is FINALLY going somewhere (around page 315 or so) she just stops. Like she ran out of paper! Ridiculous waste of time. Do NOT buy this thing!
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zengardnerPA

Posted February 4, 2011

more from this reviewer

I want to live in this book!

The most elegant, lyrical writing I have seen in a long time. It's also obvious that Kingsolver knows her way around the naural world. A must-read!
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jburke

Posted January 2, 2010

I Also Recommend:

One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors

This book is very sensual and the descriptions of summer and the way all animals and insects communicate through non-verbal methods is beautiful and memorable. It is beautifully written and a great introduction to this author if you haven't read her before. If you like Barbara Kingsolver you will love this book.
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debbook

Posted August 25, 2009

more from this reviewer

excellent read

Prodigal Summer is one of my favorite books, by one of my favorite authors. It tells the story of three different people over the course of one summer in Appalachia.

Deanna Wolfe, works for the Forest Service and lives an isolated existence tracking and protecting coyotes. Lusa Landowski is a young entomologist who moved to a small farm to be with her now deceased husband. Garnett Walker is an 80 year old man trying to bring back the chestnut trees to his region and battling with his neighbor Nannie, whose organic farming methods threaten his project.

Kingsolver deftly weaves these stories together with an appreciation and understanding of humans and their impact on the environment and nature. Kingsolver has a way of drawing you into the story and making you care about her characters.

I would put Kingsolver in the same class as Alice Hoffman in her ability to tell a story that makes you feel different, feel moved by reading one of her novels. I even got a biology lesson during this read, but I was so enthralled with the story that I didn't even notice I'd learned anything until it was all over :) Kingsolver writes beautiful and poetic prose but always has important themes within. This is a lighter read than The Poisonwood Bible. If you have never read one of her books, this is a good one to start with and I highly recommend it
http://bookmagic418.blogspot.com/
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songcatchers

Posted June 11, 2009

more from this reviewer

fascinating and beautiful....

This is the second time (so far) that I've read Prodigal Summer and I love it just as much as I did the first time. This thought provoking novel is full of so much relevant dialogue. And I never thought I'd learn so much about the natural world just by reading a novel! There are in depth discussions about coyotes and predator/prey relationships as well as insects and a whole host of other living creatures. There are interesting arguments about the use of pesticides and the harm that they do. But this book isn't just about trees and coyotes, it's about human interaction as well. Prodigal Summer is a fascinating, beautiful testament to nature.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted May 2, 2009

Consider past, present and future

This book was a required reading for a club I belong to. When I first began to read it I was disappointed - thought it was going to be a 'romance' of sorts. As I continued to read (and opened my mind) I found this book to be stimulating, moving, enlightening and certainly thought provoking. I want to better understand the relationship we have with our environment and how we can benefit from it while protecting it. This book was wonderful. I am so glad I read past the first part. I appreciate the way Kingsolver taught the reader through beautiful narrative. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who knows it is time to protect and enjoy what we have.
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LisaRaeWI

Posted March 11, 2009

My favorite book of all time

This is my favorite book and I reread it every year, delighted with the story, the humor, and the poetic prose of Barbara Kingsolver everytime.
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Anonymous

Posted February 16, 2009

I Also Recommend:

Prodigal Summer

This was a life changing book for me. My book club loved it too.
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Anonymous

Posted January 29, 2009

too much of everything

This was not a good read. The details bogged me down and had me skipping paragraphs dedicated to the description of a leaf or moth.
Boring. If you are an animal and nature lover maybe it's for you - but I am both and it was just too much for me.
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Ed-Philosopher

Posted December 5, 2008

For lovers of nature and lovers of life, young and old

With this book, Barbara Kingsolver has won the place in my heart as my favorite author. This is a book for lovers of nature and lovers of life, young and old. Beware: It'll make a scientist want to throw off her lab coat and plunge her hands in the soil, it'll make a farmer want to return to the old-fashioned (organic) methods, and it just might make you a better neighbor wherever you live.
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Anonymous

Posted September 4, 2008

I Listened to it

I bought a copy of the book for someone who reads novels. However, she passed away unexpectedly so I gave it to the local library. As for me, I don't like to read novels I have lots of serious non-fiction to read/write, so I want someone to READ novels to me. Aahh, story hours at the library when I was a kid! Anyway, I greatly enjoyed listening to a library copy of 'Prodigal Summer' and thought the intended recipient would, too. As far as analysis of the book, I don't like to analyze, just enjoy and sometimes learn new things.
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Anonymous

Posted January 2, 2008

Profound and beautifully written

This book now tops the list of my favorites. Anything I could write about it will not do it justice. Just read it.
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Anonymous

Posted April 26, 2007

deightful read- both a wonderful retreat and educational tome

If everyome would read this novel it would be great for this planet in the snse of opening doors of simple understanding to the natural world. While the intertwined stories of love are easy to experience and fall into- the best is the how small actions can make a difrerence on many fronts. Moths and coyotes all the sudden will have a greater audience- and tha is a good thing. Enjoy! have turned this book onto many people and haven't had one yet that didn't agree it is Kingslovers best!
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Anonymous

Posted September 29, 2006

Appalachian Location is Perfection

Ms. Kingsolver does a wonderful job of creating very real characters in a very real location--the Appalachian Mountains. You get to know a handful of people and the facets of their lives that, eventually, intertwine together via their close proximity, both geographically speaking and also by the ecosystem that connects them all. I found myself making note of the lines that really spoke to me--I couldn't dismiss their profoundness.
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Prodigal Summer

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Barbara Kingsolver

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Chapter One

Predators

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Chapter One

Predators

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Hard to get interested in...

Really Boring

A terrific book altogether! It made me hungry for a sequel to discover how the many touching characters fared ultimately. The future is hinted at, temptingly. I wanted more.

Another winner from Kingsolver

Summer Escape

Brilliant!

WASTE of Anybodys time!!!

I want to live in this book!

One of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors

excellent read

fascinating and beautiful....

Consider past, present and future

My favorite book of all time

Prodigal Summer

too much of everything

For lovers of nature and lovers of life, young and old

I Listened to it

Profound and beautifully written

deightful read- both a wonderful retreat and educational tome

Appalachian Location is Perfection