My Favorite Reads #6: PRODIGAL SUMMER by Barbara Kingsolver

Alyce of At Home with Books hosts My Favorite Reads, a weekly feature spotlighting favorite reads from pre-blogging days. Because it's been a while since the books were read, these posts are not reviews per se, but rather impressionistic remembrances of a positive reading experience. I think of this feature as an opportunity to more deeply explore the range of my reading interests and those of other book bloggers and readers of book blogs outside of the current crop of new releases.

Do you have an old favorite that you'd like to share?

PRODIGAL SUMMER
by Barbara Kingsolver

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date: October 2001
ISBN-13: 9780060959036
Sales Rank: 5,072
464pp

Description (from the publisher):
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. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, 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 that has become her own. 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 possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the countryside, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. With the complexity that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama, and ideas that render it an inspiring work of fiction.
Why I Chose This Book:

This is absolutely one of my all-time favorite books, and high summer is the perfect time to read it. PRODIGAL SUMMER is bursting with love, life, hope, and redemption. And if I didn't already love it enough on its own merits, it's special to me because I actually met Barbara Kingsolver around the time she might have been working on this novel.

As I drive along the highway every day and drink up the sight of dreamy wild chicory and vibrant orange tiger lilies along the roadside, I think of the summer of 1998 which I spent in Abingdon, Virginia. Abingdon, for those of you who don't know, is located in the southwestern corner of Virginia, close to both North Carolina and Kentucky, high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and surely one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

One day, my sister took me to a nursery just over the line in Kentucky. Being at least the middle of July and between summer and fall plantings, the huge greenhouse was deserted except for my sister and me, a couple of employees, and one other lady with a young girl in tow. At some point, I realised the woman looked a lot like Barbara Kingsolver but, of course, I wasn't sure. I remembered that she had grown up in Kentucky and often visited. Then I saw her southwestern beaded belt -- it said "Arizona" or "Tucson" -- I can't remember which. I knew Barbara Kingsolver lived in Tucson -- for a long time, so had I. It had to be her! I screwed up my courage and introduced myself. No, I didn't get a photo of us together or even her autograph. The little girl looked about 6 years old, and I didn't want to intrude on what was most likely their mother-daughter time. Besides, I'm embarrassed to say I was way too intimidated (and incredibly hot in that greenhouse!) and my mind went blank, and I'm lucky if I didn't say something incredibly silly. A couple of years later, when the book came out, I realized the coincidence of the timing, and if she wasn't actually working on the book when we met, surely it was gestating.

So that was my brush with celebrity. When it comes to the the book itself, PRODIGAL SUMMER, I think you should hop on over to Fyrefly's Book Blog and read her beautifully written "love letter to Prodigal Summer" which she wrote last October. She says everything I could hope to say much better than I could hope to say it. And then if you haven't read PRODIGAL SUMMER, go read it, or read it again!

About the author(from the publisher):

Equally at home with poetry, novels, and nonfiction narratives, Barbara Kingsolver credits her careers in scientific writing and journalism with instilling in her a love of nature, a writer's discipline, and a strong sense of social justice.
Click here to visit the author's website.
Click here to read an excerpt from Chapter One.
Visit Reading in Appalachia where Icedream has spotlighted the Barbara Kingsolver's November release in her Waiting on Wednesday post.