barbara kingsolver prodigal summer summary

Once There Were Wolves (review to come soon).Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end.” I savored every word of this love-song to nature. The natural world is described in mesmerizing and sensuous detail. Despite some preachiness about conservation in this (more-than-20-year-old) book, the writing is beautiful and the characters are compelling and lushly portrayed. In the end, the 3 intertwined plots are really 3 stories about human love and the love of all living things. How to find your place among the world’s chaos after the death of your mate, your anchor. The role of keystone predators, like coyotes, that hold together a complex ecosystem by allowing other species to survive. The sexual reproduction of flora, fauna (and humans) and their frenzy to procreate in the summertime! The animal nature of humans. The magnificence of the natural world, its astonishing beauty and rhythms and forces, and how humans should find better ways to live in peace with it on planet Earth. The interconnectedness of all things and humankind’s place in nature. Garnett Walker, an elderly and conservative curmudgeon who is trying to revive the near-extinct breed of American chestnut trees butts heads with his neighbor over God and organic farming. In-laws who despise her and crushing farm debt lead her to inventive actions. Lusa Landowski, a city-bred entomologist, is newly married and unexpectedly left a widow on her husband’s farm near a tiny community of 600 people. When a den of coyotes migrates to the area, she keeps tabs on them and must fight to protect them against a Wyoming sheep-rancher with whom she is having a passionate affair. Deanna Wolfe is a reclusive wildlife biologist and forest service employee who has lived the last 2 years in an isolated mountain cabin as she maintains the wilderness habitat. Set in fictional Zebulon County in rural Appalachia across a single summer, the novel, in alternating chapters, tells 3 parallel narratives that grow increasingly entwined in surprising ways as the novel progresses.

Don’t know how I missed this 23-year-old, beautiful novel about love, the interconnectedness of all things and humankind’s place in nature.

Barbara kingsolver prodigal summer summary