Prodigal Summer

by Barbara Kingsolver

I picked up this book at the library because I was actually looking for a different book by Barbara Kingsolver, and they didn't have it, so I chose a different one. I had no idea what this was about, but it didn't take long to get sucked right in.

This book is actually three woven into one. There are three separate characters who tell different stories. They all live in the same area, but they don't really interact with each other, so they are really three separate stories. We first met Deanna Wolfe, a nature biologist who is basically a mountain woman. She lives alone in a very rustic cabin, and devotes her life to maintaining the forest around her. When we meet her, she is hot on the trail of something very exciting- she has discovered a pack of coyote, which are not native to the area, and she is very excited to study them further. While out tracking, Deanna meets Eddie Bondo, a coyote hunter from Wyoming, and it doesn't take long for a strange romance to ensue.

The second character we meet is Lusa. Lusa is a young wife who finds herself widowed shortly before her first wedding anniversary. She is now a farmer, with no idea what she is doing, and her husbands family of five sisters is not making life easy for her. She grapples with the decision as to whether she should stay on her deceased husbands farm and try to save it, or should she run, and go back to the life she knew before. The journey on the way to the decision is full of surprises.

And the third character is a grumpy old man named Garnett Walker. We discover that Garnett thinks he has an enemy in his elderly neighbor Nannie. Nannie is an organic farmer, and Garnett is not. Nannie is constantly after Garnett to stop using his pesticides and his herbicides, and the struggle between the two is rather humorous. We find that Garnett is on the forgetful side, but has devoted his remaining time to breeding chestnut trees. The demise of the great chestnut to the blight so many years ago is constantly on his mind, and it is his dream to develop a generation of chestnut that is resistant to the blight.

All three stories interweave to tell a much grander story about conserving the earth. The message is pretty blatant, but the stories were engaging, and I particularly enjoyed the story of Lusa. And while I also enjoyed the stories of the other two people, I found Deanna's story to be a bit disturbing. Deanna's story is, quite frankly, the romance portion of the novel. Some of the details could have been done without, in my opinion. And while Deanna did contribute to the other two portions of the novel, I just felt some of the "details" a little un-necessary, and just not to my liking. But that is my preference, of course.

After I finished reading this book I felt a serious urge to move to an Appalachian valley and try my hand at organic gardening, and goat raising. The message contained within the stories was received loud and clear, and I suppose it did have some effect since I would like to learn more about the science behind organic gardening. I already garden, to some extent, but don't use chemicals, so technically, it is organic gardening, but I would like to learn more about which plants grow well together, and what kind of bugs are good for certain plants, that type of thing.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel, and I will not turn down another opportunity to read Barbara Kingsolver, and I recommend it with reservations. If adult situations bother you, this book is not for you. But if you can get past them with no problems, I think this book is worth reading.