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Marietta Greer leaves her limited options in Kentucky for the West. After adventures and car problems on the road she winds up in Tucson with a new name (Taylor) and a Native American baby entrusted to her care. She finds herself in a close knit group of friends including her roommate LouAnn, and Mattie whose tire store is where Taylor’s car broke down. After an incident in a park a social worker realizes Taylor may have no rights to Turtle. At the same time, Taylor learns of the work Mattie is doing to help undocumented workers. Those major plot points knit together to an eventful conclusion

Barbara Kingsolver’s novels explore people behind the eight ball due to no fault of their own. In Demon Copperhead poverty and addiction are the catalysts; in The Poisonwood Bible the catalyst is a parent making a stupid decisions that puts his family in danger. In this novel we don’t see a lot of what pushes Taylor to leave; but we come to understand enough.

Taylor finds salvation in the new family she becomes part of and learns that caring and mutual support are essential for growth. There is a beautiful extended metaphor toward the end of the novel about the bean trees that demonstrates this need for others. Over the period of the novel Taylor grows a lot and learns of bigger problems in the world and how to help care for others.

“When I was a child I had a set of paper dolls. They were called the Family of Dolls, and each one had a name written on the cardboard base under the feet. Their names were Mom, Dad, Sis, and Junior. I played with those dolls in a desperate loving way until their paper arms and heads disintegrated, I loved them in spite of the fact that their tight-knit little circle was as far beyond my reach as the football players’ and cheerleaders’ circle would be in later years. But that night I looked at the four of us there on the sofa and my heart hurt and I thought: in a different worlds we could have been the Family of Dolls.”

Page 185

Barbara Kingsolver is a wonderful storyteller and brings us up close to the characters in a way that we care and worry about them. The problems they face are realistic and the characters act like real people would. In 2009 Barbara Kingsolver wrote a followup novel picking up Taylor and Turtle’s lives three years after the first book. I’m not sure I’m brave or tough enough to read it. Like Schrödinger’s cat, I know Taylor and Turtle will live happily ever after if I don’t read it.

I highly recommend this novel. It is an excellent starting point to Barbara Kingsolver’s body of work.