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Prodigal Summer

by Barbara Kingsolver

3.89 · rating details · 32,674 ratings · 2,951 reviews

Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find ...more

Paperback, 444 pages

Published October 16th 2001 by Harper Perennial (first published 2000)

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Oct 21, 2007

meredith rated it

Ok. What gives, Kingsolver?
I have adored her work for years, and had this particular book sitting on my shelf for a long time unread. I picked it up to read recently, and went "oh yeah, that's why". i'd tried previous times to read it and couldn't "get into it". I'm usually a stickler for the "getting in to it" factor. if something doesnt hold my attention, or is downright fucking painful, within the first chapter, i have to ditch it.

but no. i gave...more

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Sep 04, 2007

Laurie rated it

Recommends it for: people who like biology textbooks and romance novels, especially at the same time.

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 11, 2007

Ray rated it

I first read Barbara Kingsolver maybe 10 years ago and really liked her. Since then, I've discovered authors like Edna Forbes and Alice Hoffman who also both have an interest in the lives of rural women, rich narratives and, sometimes magical realism. That said, Kingsolver is still very much at the top of this field. However, this book left me somewhat disappointed by the end for two reasons:

1. Big themes- without spoiling too much, the theme of this book is that evolution is alway...moreI first read Barbara Kingsolver maybe 10 years ago and really liked her. Since then, I've discovered authors like Edna Forbes and Alice Hoffman who also both have an interest in the lives of rural women, rich narratives and, sometimes magical realism. That said, Kingsolver is still very much at the top of this field. However, this book left me somewhat disappointed by the end for two reasons:

1. Big themes- without spoiling too much, the theme of this book is that evolution is always going on and that human beings are not the end product of evolution, just a part of it. Perhaps more importantly Kingsolver tries to remind us that evolution is a slow, long, adaptive process. Evolution rarely happens quickly, yet Kingsolver’s characters themselves go though rapid, possibly even radical changes, by the end of this book. Good stuff for drama, but inconsistent with some of the broader themes.

2. Narrative Structure- nonlinear storytelling is not accomplished solely through an unconventional conclusion (read: Hollywood happy ending/closure). Kingsolver ends her book in a kind of abstract manner, shifting perspective to some coyotes whose existence in the plot prior to the end point seemed added on. Many minor plot were left unresolved as the coyotes walked off into the Sun, This would have been fine if the rest of the plot has not been so plodding and attentive to every detail in each character's life, but it was.

The conventional tale paired with an aspiring, but unresolved ending, just felt incomplete.

Along the same lines, the interweaving of characters and narrative voices is great, but about 3/4 of the way through the book every main character had been connected to every other main character in a way that simply felt over the top and a bit trite. Like, we get it, it's a small community and these characters needed to have some kind of theme tying them together, but it got a bit silly by the final connection.

Despite these flaws, Prodigal Summer was a good read and brought up a lot of interesting ideas and themes. The dialogue was well written and engaging.
(less)

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Jul 16, 2008

Kathryn rated it

Recommended to Kathryn by: Tyler & Melanie

Overall, a delightful, thoughtful and refreshing novel. I loved the pure joy, the contagious adoration, for nature — from top predators to insects to extinct trees to blossoming weeds — that shines through the pages. (My only real gripe with the book is that, on occasion, this love morphs into rather a preachy cautionary tale, or scolding—it could still have been powerfully ecological and progressive without the few soap-box passages.) Another message is the sometimes-lovely, sometimes-scary,...more

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Aug 26, 2008

Tom rated it

Prodigal Summer tells the stories of several different people clustered around a deep valley in Southern Appalachia. Deana is wildlife biologist who works for the forest service. She enjoys her hermitic existence living in a cabin on a mountain, keeping track of the wildlife in the National Forest. This all changes when a young hunter comes into her life, for whom she feels a strong physical desire. Lusa is an academic who marries a farmer from the valley, and moves with him onto his farm. She i...moreProdigal Summer tells the stories of several different people clustered around a deep valley in Southern Appalachia. Deana is wildlife biologist who works for the forest service. She enjoys her hermitic existence living in a cabin on a mountain, keeping track of the wildlife in the National Forest. This all changes when a young hunter comes into her life, for whom she feels a strong physical desire. Lusa is an academic who marries a farmer from the valley, and moves with him onto his farm. She is widowed and left alone amidst his clannish family, mounting farm debts, and a desire to work in tune with the land in contrast to the local farming wisdom. I can't remember the name of the third protaganist, but he is a very religious retired agricultural vocational teacher in his eighties. He is plagued by his scandalous (She wears shorts and doesn't believe in pesticides), younger (in her seventies) neighbor who owns an apple orchard.

There were some things I really liked about Prodigal Summer. In particular I really enjoyed Kingsolver's love of the Southern Appalachian ecosystem that comes through loud and clear in the book. She was a biologist before she became a novelist, and her deep understanding of ecology, and her wonder at nature's systems is so well described. It's a good set of interwoven stories, and I enjoyed reading the book.

There were definitely some things about the book that I didn't like. Clearly Kingsolver was not writing for my half (male) of the population. I've read and enjoyed many books with female protaganists, but I felt somewhat excluded from Prodigal Summer. Instead of appealing to the universality of human emotions, there was almost a sense that Kingsolver was only writing this book for women, and didn't expect or even want men to read it. I say this not as a criticism, it's her book and she can reach out to any audience she wants, but as a factor that took away from my enjoyment of the book. What I would label as a criticism was the over obvious version of feminism that pervaded the book. Reading Prodigal Summer felt a little like talking to a 14 year old girl who has started thinking about feminism for the first time. I wanted to tell Kingsolver, "I get it! Women are in touch with nature and work with it. Men try to control nature and don't understand it." I don't resent the point. I think there is some truth in it, as long as we're talking in generalities. But it annoyed me that this well trodden ground was presented as a revelation. I also felt like there was a real sterotyping of the male chracters, and some of the female ones. The men in the story were either eye candy, backwards bible thumpers stuck in the 1950s, or dumb red-necks. God knows there have been enough stories where the female charcters have been stereotyped, and maybe there is a statement to be made by turning the tables, but characters with no complexity detract from a book, whatever the reason.(less)

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Feb 13, 2010

Pamela added it

Shelves: fiction

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 o...moreThere 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 (less)

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Sep 08, 2007

JennyGranola rated it

Recommends it for: people with bizare sexual fantasies about nature

I think my favorite line of "poetry" from this book is "He made love to me like a farmer!" She then goes on to talk about milking cows and tilling the land while describing their love making. Maybe I've just known too many farmers in my life and found none of them in the least bit attractive. There is nothing romantic about the smell of manure on a man. And anyway, I think that line sums up the depth of this book pretty well. From the first chapter I knew I was in trouble wh...more

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May 27, 2007

Jessica rated it

okay, so this is my mad dash back to the bookstore at the airport book. i chose it because i liked the poisonwood bible so much. this is definitely much different, and if i would have read the inside cover reviews (calling the novel "sexually exuberant") i wouldn't have bought it. however, i'm not all the way done with it, but i've been kind of sucked into the storylines now and i can't NOT finish it. so, the jury's still out.

okay, so i just finished and i was bugged by...more

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Mar 13, 2010

Heather rated it

I don't want it to end! :( There's still much life for these characters to lead and I want to be there for it! Although I guess it has to end somewhere...

The BEAUTIFUL NATURAL WORLD she gives - my kingdom to know so much and be so deeply involved in the real world around me. (This week, I met the wooly bear caterpillar and the granite spiny lizard at Mission Trails, both locals. I can't wait to meet more and learn about more. Thank goodness for parks and rangers - at least SO...more

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Jan 05, 2012

Laura rated it

Lots of different subplots that eventually intertwine, includes a love story too. She writes very lyrically, you'll want to savor this one. Nature / animal lovers will appreciate this one too. Something for everyone, this one is probably in my all time top 10 or 15 list.

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Sep 21, 2008

Imogen rated it

Well, here's the thing, Oriana. I always think that I don't like long novels, but whenever I get through a hundred pages of one and find myself in the world of that novel, I'm sucked in and I love it. (And by "long novel" I think I mean, like, more than 300 pages. I LIKE to have read stuff!) So it took me a while to get into this one, and then realize that it's so much about just animals and the woods and small towns and, kind of, the way the whole world works.

Which I gues...more

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May 10, 2011

Annika rated it

Very descriptive and calming. Three stories tied into one, and cleaned up neatly at the end. A good summertime read.

I read this book again, so I can write a better review, since this book definitely deserves a second thought.

This is a book to be savored, meaning, it is not a light easy read, and it isn't fluff. It isn't loaded with heavy issues (Barbara Kingsolver's "Poisonwood Bible" is definitely a heavier chunk o' reading compared to this) but I feel to truly...moreVery descriptive and calming. Three stories tied into one, and cleaned up neatly at the end. A good summertime read.

I read this book again, so I can write a better review, since this book definitely deserves a second thought.

This is a book to be savored, meaning, it is not a light easy read, and it isn't fluff. It isn't loaded with heavy issues (Barbara Kingsolver's "Poisonwood Bible" is definitely a heavier chunk o' reading compared to this) but I feel to truly appreciate "Prodigal Summer", one must be in the right mindset.

This book takes three stories and alternates chapters with three different points of view. If you can pay attention to detail, you won't have trouble picking up on very subtle things the author leaves along the way, like bread crumbs on the trail that weaves through the three tales. However, Kingsolver is not an in-your-face author. She won't nudge you and say "Didja catch that? Didja?" It's up to you to find the "clues", so to speak.

Each story/chapter has it's own title. "Predators" is essentially a love story, an older "mountain woman" and a much younger hunter meet by chance on a mountain trail. Their story isn't so much love as it is obsession. In terms of nature, their story is very detailed. I love how Kingsolver can describe a tree, a rainstorm, a snake, a bug, a cabin in the woods and each time it's different and beautiful. She doesn't feel like she flipped through a thesaurus and learned new words as she went along. Her language is very easy and flows nicely with the setting of the story. Since Deanna Wolfe is a woman who has lived on the mountain for two years observing the flora and fauna, this type of dialect would come easily to her.

The second story/chapter is "Moth Love". Lusa Widener married a farmer, Cole, the only brother of five sisters. Lusa is Polish/Arabian and finds herself the owner of a tobacco farm at the foot of the mountains. She is not a farmer herself, but a botanist and a "bug lady" and struggles with relating to anyone in her new family. Her ideas about farming get her ridiculed.

The third story/chapter is "Old Chestnuts". Garnett Walker is a man in his eighties, a retired vo-ag teacher who is grafting a new chestnut tree to withstand the blight that took out all the American chestnuts in the region. He is an extremely focused, uptight, aged man who just wants to be left alone on his farm and in his own routine, except for one thorn in his flesh, his neighbor Nannie Rawley, whose apple orchard, beehives, and gardening techniques cause him agitation and stress.

I enjoyed this book even more the second time I read it. The dialect flows easily, the setting is very real, and the stories all tie up nicely by the end. I love the subtlety of this book, and still the complexity of instinct, life, death, rebirth, and finding our purpose here, among nature, to co-exist in some kind of harmony. (less)

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Sep 21, 2008

Karah rated it

Recommends it for: Trisha

Calling all nature lovers! I really loved this book and think that if anyone loves summer and living things and plants and animals and learning about nature, they will love it too! It wasn't exactly a page-turner in that I had to pick it up every second I wasn't reading, but it was extremely interesting. It took place in the summer and ends in autumn so it was kind of neat to start it towards the end of summer and end it as fall was beginning. If you've never read Barbara Kingsolver, her boo...moreCalling all nature lovers! I really loved this book and think that if anyone loves summer and living things and plants and animals and learning about nature, they will love it too! It wasn't exactly a page-turner in that I had to pick it up every second I wasn't reading, but it was extremely interesting. It took place in the summer and ends in autumn so it was kind of neat to start it towards the end of summer and end it as fall was beginning. If you've never read Barbara Kingsolver, her books are filled with biology lessons and are so neat to read.

This book centers around three main characters leading separate lives in one Southern mountain valley. Their lives revolve around the nature that surrounds them (in some way or another) and in some way, the three are all connected to eachother. I highly recommend this book if you want a novel, a little unknown biology knowledge, and a few things to think about regarding right & wrong with the way we treat our Earth.

Characters:
Lusa, the young 20-something widow is left to take care of her late husband's farm and still manage dealing with all of her nosy sisters-in-law and country folks who think they know what's best for her. She ends up befriending her young niece and nephew (and eventually adopting them when her sister in law becomes ill) and teaching them all sorts of interesting facts about insects and plants and nature.

Deanna, a 40- something who lives alone in a small hut on the mountain working for the forest service. She's fine living in the absence of humans and is huge friend of coyotes--in a world where every farmer is ready to hunt them all. When Eddie Bondo shows up on her mountain, they connect and have a summer long love affair. It came as no surprise to me that she was pregnant when the book ended because of their blatant physical attraction to each other.

Garnett, an old 80 something man who seems to be owly and upset with the world. He's hell bent on spraying his pesticides and cannot stand his neighbor, Nannie Rowley, who let's the Beetles fly free. Through the course of the book, we see Garnett start to open up a bit--at first he's really difficult to understand with his old-man thinking. By the end, he and Nannie have formed a friendship which we thought never possible.

The three are connected: Garnett's disowned son is the father of Lusa's young niece and nephew (their grandpa). Lusa and Deanna share several deep rooted beliefs about pesticides and nature although they don't know each other. Ironically, the green chair that once belonged in Lusa's in-laws stateroom now adorns the porch of Deanna's little cabin in the woods. Deanna grew up without a mother but her father's long time girlfriend was nannie Rawley, the neighbor of Garnett. (less)

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Jun 21, 2008

Bethany rated it

Recommends it for: all readers

Recommended to Bethany by: It was a gift from my mother

Shelves: book-club, adultfiction

This is my favorite of Barbara Kingsolver's fiction.

Three stories weave together into a beautiful story of nature, love, and family. The biology Kingsolver integrates in the narrative is educational and fascinating.

The three threads begin with "Predators" which follows Deanna, who is a Forest Preserve ranger and lives alone in a small cabin high upon Zebulon Mountain. She unexpectedly begins a romance with a roaming coyote poacher, although Deanna is working ...more

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Apr 07, 2008

Brenda rated it

I enjoyed Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible so much that for some reason I delayed reading this one (does that make sense?). I just liked the idea of another unread novel by her being out there, waiting for me to read -- something I was saving like a piece of rich dark chocolate.

Her descriptions of the natural world are lovely. The relationships are complex and sexy and intriguing. My favorite story line is the romance between Deanna and Eddie. It reminds me of the romance in "The ...more

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Oct 15, 2007

Joy rated it

· review of another edition

It took me many tries to get past the first fifty pages. I'm not sure why. Finally, when I was determined to get through this text and also pressured by the fact that I don't have a lot of books here in Egypt and books in English can be prohibitively expensive, I found I really enjoyed the three narratives that come together at the end. Because all three narratives include someone discussing about how the environment is one interconnected ecological web and therefore both human bounty hunting...more

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Dec 17, 2007

Anne rated it

This was the second book I read by Kingslover, and I admit, a little leery as Poisonwood Bible was the my only experience and that book sincerely disappointed; however, Prodigal Summer was a sheer delight and I'm glad I tried another novel by Kingslover.

This novel is feast for anyone who celebrates nature writing. Kingslover captures the essence of the blue ridge mountains in Virginia and all the competing interests that are being grappled with in this region today.

Bes...more

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Jul 19, 2007

Nichole (Dirty H) rated it

Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: favorites, books-i-own

I think that one of the measures of a good writer is their ability to make the reader truly care about the characters and/or the issue that they are writing about.
In this case, Barbara Kingsolver took a topic that I honestly could not have cared less about, and wrote a book that had me completely gripped from beginning to end. This book left me actually caring about that issue and thinking about it for weeks.
Prodigal Summer is a novel about the interconnectedness (is that a word?) of...more

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Jun 25, 2008

Jeanette rated it

Recommended to Jeanette by: Julie

Shelves: four-star-fiction, all-fiction

This is really sort of three novels in one: Predators, Moth Love, and Old Chestnuts. The book alternates among the three stories, which take place within a few miles of each other. The stories do turn out to be related in the end, but each reads like a separate story. I liked the Moth Love thread the best out of the three.

The stories themselves rated about 3 to 3.5 stars for me, but I'm bumping it up to four stars overall because of the author's knowledge and beautiful writing abou...more

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May 28, 2007

Emma rated it

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: to-read-again-and-again, shaped-my-adolesence

This novel, which jumps back and forth through the lives and stories of a few strong characters, really gets to the core of what life is about and how people tend to deal with it. I find this book really easy to connect with. The characters are very real and very honest, they have faults but they confront them. This book is full of passion, romance, strong friendships, deceit, hard choices and many other disturbing and encompassing aspects of human nature. It is amazingly easy to get attached to...more

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Apr 06, 2009

Kelly rated it

Just in case you were wondering if Mother Nature is a sex maniac...she is. Kingsolver gets the science descriptions just right and the narrative weaves in aspects of several families in the Appalachians. Didn't trump the Poinsonwood Bible (her other recent fiction) but was a great compliment for those of us that wanted more (yum).

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Mar 27, 2011

Sally Pearce rated it

Recommends it for: anyone who loves to read

Shelves: read-in-2010, favorites

When I first started this book, I wrote, "Kingsolver seduces the reader into the book with her lyrical and poetic writing.". If I'd only known how prophetic that was! This is a beautiful book to be read slowly and savored.

The story takes place over one summer and tells three stories of love. The language and phrasing is so beautiful that I had to stop periodically and let what I had read sink in. It literally took my breath away in so many places.

This is no...more

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May 17, 2008

Jeanne rated it

I really enjoyed this book. Of the three story lines, I found two of them predictable, but the characters were so interesting I didn't really care. I wasn't sure until the end how the relationship between Deanna and Eddie would work out, and I appreciated that it wasn't exactly "happily ever after." I also liked that throughout most of the book, you really didn't know how the three main characters were connected, and even in the end the author never really brings them all together. Yet...more

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Apr 03, 2007

Jacob added it

Recommends it for: nature lovers, people suffering loss

This book stands alone as one that is able to discuss flowers and be erotic at doing it. The story begins and ends in three pieces, three concurrent story lines set in the far western panhandle of Virginia. While the three main characters are in themselves quite independent from each other they are geographically close to each other. This story could make you cry if you want to do so, but over all it really is a peaceful story. I found myself put at ease while reading. I enjoyed the feeling...more

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Aug 08, 2010

Lindsay rated it

Recommended to Lindsay by: Rachel McAdams, Marie-Claire

Shelves: tales-of-appalachia, my-own-picks, books-i-own

This was the first book by Barbara Kingsolver that I've read and it certainly won't be the last! A beautiful tale of love, sex, nature, family and relationships, both good and bad. This book is highly recommended to anyone who loves a story with rich, detailed language and interweaving story lines and characters. Also, I think this book is an important commentary on the state of today's debate on the environment without being heavy-handed and beating you over the head with a point of view. J...more

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Jul 15, 2009

Jessie rated it

This book makes me homesick on an atomic level. Kingsolver, so far as I can tell, is a near-infallibly good storyteller. I'd read any of her books and expect to enjoy myself. This one, however, is special. A lot of it's about my connection to the place I call home, a connection that's deeply, intractably imbedded in the land itself. Other writers capture the South in its people, but in this book Kingsolver has re-created the way I remember my little corner of Appalachia--first, the land; th...more

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Feb 23, 2009

Michael rated it

I’ve read and enjoyed all of Barbara Kingsolver’s novels but “Prodigal Summer” stands out for me. The opening lines promise that you’re going on a journey into the minds of memorable characters: “Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption.” What follows doesn’t disappoint.

Three parallel stories unfold of characters quite unalike on the surface and yet connected in deeper ways that resonate profoundly. It would have b...more

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Feb 13, 2009

Naomi rated it

I bought this book at a library sale and was so excited because I just loved The Poisonwood Bible by her; I could not stop talking about it. This book was kind of disappointing in that it took me until about page 162 to get into it, and even then, it wasn't the life-changer that the other one was. But, it did get me thinking about gardening and beekeeping and fun things I'd like to do someday. There was a lot of sex in it. In fact, the whole book was about reproduction and evolutions of all kind...more

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Dec 22, 2008

Lara rated it

I was a little disappointed in this book, because I loved the Poisonwood Bible, so I had high expectations for this novel set in the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. There were three separate stories. I enjoyed the stories of Garnet and Nannie, two old people on neighboring properties who have an interesting, volatile relationship. There were several things in their story that made me smile or laugh out loud. I also liked Lusa's story, a young widow who was left with the family farm. ...more

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Dec 07, 2008

Mark rated it

Shelves: fiction

Loved it! Set in the southern mountains of Virginia, in and around the fictional Zebulon National Forest, it follows the story of three groups of people who are inter-related, but unaware of their tenuous connectedness. There is Deanna, a woman in her forties, who works for the Forest Service, lives the life of a hermit and is passionate about seeing a family of coyotes survive in her forest. Her solitude is broken by the arrival of a younger man who fails to understand her, but loves her in his...more

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About Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo,...moreBarbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally.

Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Each of her books published since 1993 have been on The New York Times Best Seller list. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna and the National Humanities Medal. She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change."

Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1955 and grew up in Carlisle in rural Kentucky. When Kingsolver was seven years old, her father, a physician, took the family to the former Republic of Congo in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her parents worked in a public health capacity, and the family lived without electricity or running water.

After graduating from high school, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. Eventually, however, she changed her major to biology when she realized that "classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of [them:] get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby." She was involved in activism on her campus, and took part in protests against the Vietnam war. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977, and moved to France for a year before settling in Tucson, Arizona, where she would live for much of the next two decades. In 1980 she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Arizona, where she earned a Master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology.

Kingsolver began her full-time writing career in the mid 1980s as a science writer for the university, which eventually lead to some freelance feature writing. She began her career in fiction writing after winning a short story contest in a local Phoenix newspaper. In 1985 she married Joseph Hoffmann; their daughter Camille was born in 1987. She moved with her daughter to Tenerife in the Canary Islands for a year during the first Gulf war, mostly due to frustration over America's military involvement. After returning to the US in 1992, she separated from her husband.

In 1994, Kingsolver was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from her alma mater, DePauw University. She was also married to Steven Hopp, that year, and their daughter, Lily, was born in 1996. In 2004, Kingsolver moved with her family to a farm in Washington County, Virginia, where they currently reside. In 2008, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Duke University, where she delivered a commencement address entitled "How to be Hopeful".

In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Kingsolver says, "I never wanted to be famous, and still don't, [...:] the universe rewarded me with what I dreaded most." She says created her own website just to compete with a plethora of fake ones, "as a defence to protect my family from misinformation. Wikipedia abhors a vacuum. If you don't define yourself, it will get done for you in colourful ways."(less)

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“Now I'm starting to think he wasn't supposed to be my whole life, he was just this doorway to me. ” — 37 people liked it

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