Homeland / The Bean Trees / Pigs in Heaven

by Barbara Kingsolver

A Barbara Kingsolver Omnibus; Contains Homeland, The Bean Trees, Pigs In Heaven and 11 other short stories.

Genres: Fiction

819 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award 2011 and the National Humanities Medal. After winning for The Lacuna in 2010 and Demon Copperhead in 2023, Kingsolver became the first author to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice. Since 1993, each one of her book titles have been on the New York Times Best Seller list.
Kingsolver was raised in rural Kentucky, lived briefly in the Congo in her early childhood, and she currently lives in Appalachia. Kingsolver earned degrees in biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. In 2000, the politically progressive Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change".

Reviews

[Landon Regalo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Home Land by Barbara King solver is a good book so far, it started a little slow. It is interesting to read about an eleven year old girl that travels the path of her grandmother to store her family history about the Cherokee Bird Clan. looking forward to see how it turns out, and hope it picks up some momentum. I liked how the book was full of short stories. If you got board of one story you could read the next. This book was good but is not my favorite.

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading a slew of mysteries and thrillers it was hard to read a book simply about a woman crossing the states. It was a little more complicated than that, but a little slow. I did appreciate her unfailing need to help and see the atrocities that she saw. And the friendships were real true friendships./

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, anything by Kingsolver is worth reading. Read this on a trip from New Mexico to California where at just serendipitously happened to visit Death Valley and the Hoover Dam, both featured in the book. Would also be a great read while driving in Oklahoma if, like me, you like to tie what you are reading to the place you are.

[Smitha Murthy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up because I liked The Bean Trees so much, but I was disappointed in this. The quirky voice of Taylor is gone, to be replaced by a lot of back and forth discordant voices. I lost interest in this...

[Stephanie Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this sequel to The Bean Trees and felt it brought the story forward in a believable sequence of events that I didn't anticipate, but once into it, I became eager to see how it all transpired. It was a page-turner that I couldn't put down.

[Missive Maven]

The bean trees by Barbara Kingsolver (2001)

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

How I loved these, Barbara Kingsolver's earlier books, until I read "The Poisonwood Bible," which blew them out of the water!

[Janis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this book was interesting, but I kept waiting for something major to happen with the story.

[Kerry Bradshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book. Love the author

[Shari]

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver (1994)