Pigs in Heaven

A Novel

by Barbara Kingsolver

On Sale: 05/07/2013

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Pigs in Heaven

A Novel

by Barbara Kingsolver

On Sale: 05/07/2013

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Amazon Indigo

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Book Overview
Author Info

Los Angeles Times Book Award

About the Book

Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts.

Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble.

Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart.

This edition includes a P.S. section with additional insights from Barbara Kingsolver, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

Critical Praise

“A novel full of miracles.” — Newsweek

“Breathtaking...unforgettable....This profound, funny, bighearted novel, in which people actually find love and kinship in surprising places, is also heavenly....A rare feat and a triumph.” — Cosmopolitan

“Full of wit, compassion, and intelligence.” — People

“Immensely readable, warmhearted...brimming with down-home wisdom and endearing characters.” — Boston Globe

“Kingsolver makes you care about her characters to the point of tears; she is bitingly funny—and she writes like a dream.” — San Francisco Chronicle

"Possessed of an extravagantly gifted narrative voice, Kingsolver blends a fierce and abiding moral vision with benevolent concise humor. Her medicine is meant for the head, the heart and the soul." — New York Times Book Review

“That rare combination of a dynamic story told in dramatic language, combined with issues that are serious, debatable and painful...[it’s] about the human heart in all its shapes and ramifications.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review

“There is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and the earthy poetry of ordinary folks’ talk; her descriptions have a magical lyricism rooted in daily life but also on familiar terms with the eternal.” — Washington Post Book World

Product Details

ISBN: 9780062277763
ISBN 10: 0062277766
Imprint: Harper Perennial
On Sale: 05/07/2013
Pages: 368
List Price:23.99 CAD
BISAC1 : FICTION / Native American & Aboriginal
BISAC2 : FICTION / Literary
BISAC3 : FICTION / Romance / Fantasy
BISAC4 : FICTION / Family Life / Siblings
BISAC5 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General
BISAC6 : FICTION: World Literature / American / 20th Century
BISAC7 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
BISAC8 : FICTION / Contemporary Women
BISAC9 : DRAMA / Women Authors
BISAC10 : DRAMA / American / General
BISAC11 : FICTION / Family Life

Barbara Kingsolver

Biography

Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955 and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides.

Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002), Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands, with photographer Annie Griffiths (2002), Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007), The Lacuna (2009), Flight Behavior (2012), Unsheltered (2018), How To Fly (In 10,000 Easy Lessons) (2020), Demon Copperhead (2022), and coauthored with Lily Kingsolver, Coyote's Wild Home (2023). She served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001.

Kingsolver was named one the most important writers of the 20th Century by Writers Digest, and in 2023 won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Demon Copperhead. In 2000 she received the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have been adopted into the core curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. Critical acclaim for her work includes multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the American Library Association, a James Beard award, two-time Oprah Book Club selection, and the national book award of South Africa, among others. She was awarded Britain's prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize) for both Demon Copperhead and The Lacuna, making Kingsolver the first author in the history of the prize to win it twice. In 2011, Kingsolver was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She has two daughters, Camille (born in 1987) and Lily (1996). She and her husband, Steven Hopp, live on a farm in southern Appalachia where they raise an extensive vegetable garden and Icelandic sheep.