Search - The Bean Trees

I've only read a couple of Barbara's books - and I need to read more. Down-to-earth stories about average folks going through average challenges. Yet the story is a page-turner. I felt like I knew the characters intimately and was rooting for good things to happen to them. Reading Kingsolver is kind of like rafting down a river. The story unfolds slowly, but there's always something interesting around the next corner.

I think I own this book, but I had to request a copy from the library in order to re-read it for a group discussion. I'm glad I did. Taylor and her friends and family are the sort of people I wish I knew in real life, human and flawed but really trying to do the right thing. Now I'm eager to re-read the sequel, Pigs in Heaven.

Kentucky-born Taylor Greer sets out for Tucson, Arizona to escape rural poverty and a barefoot & pregnant fate. Along the way, she acquires a 3-yr-old American Indian girl named Turtle. This is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places. Author Anne Rivers Siddons calls this book "tough and tender, gritty and moving." You'll have to judge that for yourself!

I absolutely loved this book. It was part of a high school summer reading list at an amazing expeditionary learning school. I was interested in the amount of culture this book presented and I genuinely enjoyed Ms. Kingsolver's style of writing. It was about a young adult, but I would certainly say that it reaches a wider range of readers. It's a sweet story worth reading and in my opinion, holding on to.

Will keep it forever, loved it.

Great story. It took 20-30 pages to draw me in, but once I got into the story, it was hard to put the book down. I LOVED this story.