Compared to the, well, "epicness" of Prodigal Summer and Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams seems much quieter, more personal, smaller in a way. And I really liked it JUST as much.

It takes place, mostly, in the fictional town of Grace, Arizona (and the nearby Indian Pueblo) and in some ways, rather than a novel, it's almost a collection of short stories: the day she moved back home. The day she saved a life, the day they made paper mache peacocks to sell for charity (which, of course, got me thinking that I want to make my OWN paper mache peacocks, with real peacock tail feathers that you pick up in the orchards where the peacocks run wild...) but the details are all tied together by the main story which jumps back and forth between being heartbreaking and quietly funny. And like ALL of Kingsolver's books I've read so far, it ends up not with a predictably happy ending, but with the feeling that she's tied things together as nicely as you can in real life. It's just a lovely book, is what it is.