Prodigal Summer
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Barbara Kingsolver, a writer praised for her"extravagantly gifted narrative voice" (New York Times Book Review), has created with this novel a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. 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. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as 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. 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 complexities of a world neither of them expected. Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth. With the richness that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative and ideas that only an accomplished novelist could render so beautifully.
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Author Extras
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Critical Praise for
Prodigal Summer
Kingsolver deftly addresses the struggle between mankind and nature ... A lush ... novel of love and loss in Appalachia."
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USMagazine
“Full of ... tenderness, humour and earthy spirituality.”
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Christian Science Monitor
"... a story of the many ways to define family -- human or not ... full of joy, warmth, and sweet surprise."
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Creative Loafing
"[An] extravagantly gifted narrative voice."
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New York Times Book Review
“[Kingsolver’s] sexy, lyrical fifth novel renders our solitary yearnings with a finely trained eye and ear.”
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PeopleMagazine
“A blend of breathtaking artistry, encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world ... and ardent commitment to the supremacy of nature…Barbara Kingsolver remains a voice readers have come to respect and love, a writer we will keep reading for as long as she continues to grace us with her bounty.”
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San Francisco Chronicle
"A triumphant return to the southern Appalachians of her own childhood."
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Orlando Sentinel
"A warm, intricately constructed book shot through with an extraordinary amount of insight and information about the wonders of the invisible world."
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Newsweek
"As lush, rich and abundant as nature itself ... PRODIGAL SUMMER is quietly breathtaking, and its vista awe-inspiring."
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Buffalo News
"Compelling ... Lives that are less simple, and far more passionate, than they appear."
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GlamourMagazine
"Kingsolver is a gifted magician of words."
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Time
"Ms. Kingsolver's writing is generously well-grafted; choice moments ... radiate from nearly every page."
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Wall Street Journal
“Ms. Kingsolver’s writing is generously well-crafted; choice moments…radiate from nearly every page.”
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Wall Street Journal
“A blend of breathtaking artistry, encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world…and ardent commitment to the supremacy of nature.”
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San Francisco Chronicle
“Kingsolver deftly addresses the struggle between mankind and nature…A lush…novel of love and loss in Appalachia.”
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US magazine
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The Lacuna
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. From a coastal island jungle to the unpaved neighborhoods of 1930s Mexico City, through a disastrous stint at a military school...
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The Lacuna
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is mostly a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salomé. From a coastal island jungle to the unpaved neighborhoods of 1930s Mexico City, through a disastrous stint at a military school...
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