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; then, the people. Beautiful, beautiful stuff.