Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Amazon.com Review

There is no one in contemporary literature quite like Barbara Kingsolver. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and earthy poetry; her descriptions are rooted in daily life but are also on familiar terms with the eternal. With Prodigal Summer, she returns from the Congo to a "wrinkle on the map that lies between farms and wildness." And there, in an isolated pocket of southern Appalachia, she recounts not one but three intricate stories.

Exuberant, lush, riotous--the summer of the novel is "the season of extravagant procreation" in which bullfrogs carelessly lay their jellied masses of eggs in the grass, "apparently confident that their tadpoles would be able to swim through the lawn like little sperms," and in which a woman may learn to "tell time with her skin." It is also the summer in which a family of coyotes moves into the mountains above Zebulon Valley:

The ghost of a creature long extinct was coming in on silent footprints, returning to the place it had once held in the complex anatomy of this forest like a beating heart returned to its body. This is what she believed she would see, if she watched, at this magical juncture: a restoration.

The "she" is Deanna Wolfe, a wildlife biologist observing the coyotes from her isolated aerie--isolated, that is, until the arrival of a young hunter who makes her even more aware of the truth that humans are only an infinitesimal portion in the ecological balance. This truth forms the axis around which the other two narratives revolve: the story of a city girl, entomologist, and new widow and her efforts to find a place for herself; and the story of Garnett Walker and Nannie Rawley, who seem bent on thrashing out the countless intimate lessons of biology as only an irascible traditional farmer and a devotee of organic agriculture can. As Nannie lectures Garnett, "Everything alive is connected to every other by fine, invisible threads. Things you don't see can help you plenty, and things you try to control will often rear back and bite you, and that's the moral of the story."

Structurally, that gossamer web is the story: images, phrases, and events link the narratives, and these echoes are rarely obvious, always serendipitous. Kingsolver is one of those authors for whom the terrifying elegance of nature is both aesthetic wonder and source of a fierce and abiding moral vision. She may have inherited Thoreau's mantle, but she piles up riches of her own making, blending her extravagant narrative gift with benevolent concise humor. She treads the line between the sentimental and the glorious like nobody else in American literature. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Other Reviews 

"Ms. Kingsolver's writing is generously well-grafted; choice moments ... radiate from nearly every page." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

-- Wall Street Journal

Reviewer: Dianna Johnston (see more about me) from Baxter Springs, KS United States

Prodigal Summer is a novel of three stories running concurrently and each inhabiting ideals and statements about wildlife and the food chain, pesticides and the environment, and insects and reproduction. While it doesn't seem like much of a premise for a novel, Prodigal Summer does have endearing characters that spark with life and humor all while being threaded with Barbara Kingsolver's own political platforms.

The three stories in Prodigal Summer gives us unique and carefully drawn characters. In Predators,  we have Deanna, a wildlife ranger who has made the forest her home for the past two years and who spends her days monitoring and protecting its creatures. Then along comes rancher Eddie Bndo who turns her life upside down. In Moth Love, there is young widow, Lusa, who is now alone and surrounded by her late husband, Cole's, unsupportive and unwelcoming family. Lusa battles moral questions about the farm she lives on, dealing with her in-laws, and, most importantly,  the difference between biological family and the family you inherit. Finally, in Old Chestnuts, we meet old Garnett Walker, who seems plagued by his stubborn and eccentric neighbor, Nannie Rawley.  Nannie's anti-pesticide and evolution beliefs are about to drive Garnett to the crazy house. But amidst of all the craziness and their hard-headed environmental and religious debates, Garnett manages to surprise himself.

The underlying theme of Kingsolver's political issues makes Prodigal Summer a glorious canopy for the beautifully crafted stories it holds. I wasn't sure what to make of the book when I first opened it,  but after getting familiar with each individual story, the wonder began to take hold and I was truly mesmerized. Kingsolver has a poetic way with words, and I certainly came away from this book with a more clarified understanding about the world we live in and our place within it.