Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees

Sarah Sammis

As with other Kingsolver books I've read, the narrative of The Bean Trees meanders a bit before finding its stride. It takes its time deciding if the story is about Taylor (the narrator), Lou Ann, Turtle or the other characters who populate this fictional corner of Tuscon Arizona. At the half way point, the story finally focuses squarely on Turtle. It's at that point that the book goes from being something to be read slowly, savoring each chapter, to something to be read in one sitting. While the first half took me about a month to read, the second half took me three hours. I'm glad I stuck with it.

Derek Barlas

heleen de boever

I love everything Barbara Kingsolver writes, and this was no exception. A lovely story about an unexpected group of people coming together to make a family. 

Jacqui Spears

Maggie Gordon

b.andherbooks

Marietta decides to leave her small Kentucky town behind to avoid the pitfall of young, unwed pregnancy that befell most of her peers. Despite her best intentions, Marietta (name changed to Taylor) soon finds herself saddled with a three year old girl she names Turtle and the need to settle down somewhere and put down roots. A lovely, lyrical tale of Arizona, family, and friendship. Quite lovely.

Andrea Badgley

Set in 1970s Tucson, Arizona, The Bean Trees is the story of Taylor Greer, a plucky, lovable twenty-something who drives away from her rural, dead-end Kentucky home town in her ’55 Volkswagen bug with “no windows to speak of, and no back seat and no starter.” She leaves Pittman County, where folks “had kids just about as fast as they could fall down the well and drown,” and heads west where, at a pit stop somewhere in Oklahoma, a small Cherokee child is deposited in the front seat of her car by a native woman – the child’s aunt – who tells Taylor to the child away from here. The old woman will not take no for an answer as she turns and walks away to face the child’s father – and abuser.

Like so many of Kingsolver’s works, The Bean Trees is a gratifyingly readable book; I think I finished it in three or four nights. Filled with funny Kentucky colloquialisms and the dry desert air of Tucson, The Bean Trees can feel light in its page-turning readability, but flowing beneath that lively tone are undercurrents of weighty issues. True to form, Kingsolver weaves in the strong pulse of nature,

"At three o’clock in the afternoon all the cicadas stopped buzzing at once. They left such an emptiness in the air it hurt your ears. Around four o’clock we heard thunder."

"If you looked closely you could see that in some places the rain didn’t make it all the way to the ground. Three-quarters of the way down from the sky it just vanished into the dry air."

"Everything alive had thorns."

and heart wrenching themes of social justice:

"Mrs. Parsons muttered that she thought this was a disgrace. 'Before you know it the whole world will be here jibbering and jabbering till we won’t know it’s America… They ought to stay put in their own dirt, not come here taking up jobs.'"

"When people run for their lives they frequently neglect to bring along their file cabinets of evidence."

Set in a border state and dealing with issues of immigration and human cooperation, The Bean Trees is a story of friendship, and heart, and symbiosis. It is a story of plants and people thriving in poor soil and thorny country, not because they are tough, or better adapted, or because they are strong enough to do it alone. They survive because they open themselves to being helped, and to helping each other out.

Carla Aquino

I didn't know what to think at first because this book was very country, but it ended up being really good. Something about the way she made the lives of people who have no blood relations become so close and family-like. It reminds me of all the people I have met along the way in life, in various parts of the world that will always be close to my heart and have become somewhat of a family to me being apart from my own.

Emma Younger

Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.

A Novel

Anna Moore

Lexie 

Paige Wanner

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.

The Bean Trees

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