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,
embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama, and ideas that render it an inspiring work of fiction.
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."
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...
Prodigal Summer. Copyright © by Barbara Kingsolver. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Read a Sample Chapter
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 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..."
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