High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never

by Barbara Kingsolver

In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, Barbara Kinsolver once again turns to her favored literary terrain to explore themes of family, community,and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Kingsolver's canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois. In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction. In High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver is defiant, funny, and courageously honest.

"There is no one quite like Barbara Kingsolver in contemporary literature," raves the Washington Post Book World, and it is right. She has been nominated three times for the ABBY award, and her critically acclaimed writings consistently enjoy spectacular commercial success as they entertain and touch her legions of loyal fans. In High Tide in Tucson, she returns to her familiar themes of family, community, the common good and the natural world. The title essay considers Buster, a hermit crab that accidentally stows away on Kingsolver's return trip from the Bahamas to her desert home, and turns out to have manic-depressive tendencies. Buster is running around for all he's worth -- one can only presume it's high tide in Tucson. Kingsolver brings a moral vision and refreshing sense of humor to subjects ranging from modern motherhood to the history of private property to the suspended citizenship of human beings in the Animal Kingdom.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Nature, Short Stories, Environment, Adult

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 1995

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

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

These essays were published in 1995, much earlier in her career. I enjoyed their humor and insights.

[Camelia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

“People will claim that having children is a ticket to immortality, but in fact it merely doubles your stakes in mortality. Your labor and you love and there you are, suddenly, with twice as many eyes in your house that could be put out, hearts that could be broken, new lives dearer than your own that could be taken from you. And still we do it, have children, right and left. We love and we lose, get hurled across the universe, put on a new shell, listen to the seasons.”

A collection of 25 eloquently written essays. Barbara Kingslover talks about nature, animals, writing life, writing politically or not, truth in fiction, how childhood reading shaped her, motherhood, love, divorce, and marriage.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1995, this book is a compilation of Barbara Kingsolver’s previously published essays, along with new material. The essays focus on family life, travels, nature, and environmentalism. It is named for a hermit crab that inadvertently ended up at her home in Tucson, Arizona.

I enjoyed the structure of this book. It is easy to read one essay at each sitting. Each essay addresses an entirely different topic. I found the essays well-written, analytical, diverse, and educational. She eloquently expresses her opinions.

I have selected Kingsolver for my annual goal to read “an author’s body of work” and will be reading at least five of her books. Based on the quality in this one, I am pleased with my choice. I can also recommend The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees.

[Oceana2602 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I try not to do this often, but in this case, the New York Times Book Review review on the back of my paperback edition, really says everything about these 25 essays by Barbara Kingsolver that you need to know:

Kingsolver's essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend. ...She speaks in a language rich with music and replete with good sense."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

An enormously honest and personal collection of essays. If you like any of Kingsolver's books, I'm sure you will enjoy this one.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barbara Kingsolver has 25 essays in this book, touching on the natural world, her travels, her family, and about writing. One of my favorite essays is "Infernal Paradise," in which she writes about Hawaii. She describes it as a story of "unceasing invasion." Waves of invasive species have come in to threaten the native species. We get to trek with her into Haleakala Crater on Maui, a place which is a holdout of the original Hawaii.
I think I most enjoy Ms. Kingsolver's travel stories.

[Book Concierge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Subtitle: Essays From Now Or Never

Kingsolver was already a successful novelist when this collection of essays was published. She relates her thoughts on family, home, politics, nature, social issues and personal responsibility with humor, compassion, wit and integrity. Her training as a scientist is evident, as is her talent as a poet.

As she ponders what is meaningful in life and what one person’s impact may be, she takes the reader to a number of surprisingly diverse locations and situations: from a small village in West Africa (where she obtained a voodoo love charm), to her backyard (where she battled the wild pigs intent on digging up her lovingly tended plants), to a museum of atomic bomb relics (which she found both fascinating and horrifying), to a bird-watching hike in the Virginia mountains. She examines the impact of too much television, or the use of pesticides, against the natural wonder of nature and biodiversity.

As I did with Small Wonder , I read this through as I would a novel. But this collection is probably best enjoyed by reading a chapter/essay now and again.

[Lisa Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this collection of essays years ago, and remember how thought provoking I found them. Barbara Kingsolver is, of course an excellent writer; her fiction is beautiful. The great thing about High Tide in Tuscon is actually getting a glimpse of what's inside this writer's head - the everyday things as well as the grand. It's a pretty well rounded combination of essays that come across simply as "this is what I think now" or "this is what I've been thinking about lately" - in Kingsolver's voice, almost like glorified journal entries. I guess that's what I like about this book; it's stories can be dense, but the style in which they're written is invitingly simple. The bells and whistles got left at home. I like her ideas, and how she arrives at them.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the title essay: Embrace your own biology. Don't beat yourself up for acting like the human animal that you are.
The rest of the essays: I laughed out loud more times than I can say, and I felt more connected to humanity as I read them. This is a book I go back to and re-read over and over because of that. I don't always agree with everything she says, but the essays always make me think and evaluate my own beliefs, biases, prejudices, actions.

[Tracy Rhodes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first of Kingsolver's books that I read, and it's still my favorite, albeit that it's a collection of non-fiction essays. Maybe part of the reason is that I was also living in Tucson when I read it, so the things she had to say about life in that part of Arizona resonated with me. Beyond that, though, I just love the way she uses words - she writes lyrically.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read these essays, and it's time for me to read them again. I remember, when I first read this book, it was on a horrible trip back to Cork, from San Francisco. My father was in hospital, having suffered some kind of major neurological setback, one of many on the long decline to his death in late 2002. Things were fairly touch and go, and there was a lot of waiting in hospital corridors. I was enormously grateful for the sanity and calm of Kingsolver's writing - this book helped me through a difficult time.

[Hilda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Like "Small Wonder" it was a book of essays, but less militantly environmental.

My favorite of the essays was "Jabberwocky" where she discusses art as politics. As in her other books her use of language is phenomenal and the book provided excellent thoughts and quotes.

I would definitely recommend this book.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like if NPR wrote an essay collection. Tedious, boring, pretentious.

1. No one cares about your book tours or piles of fan mail.
2. Actually, Silence of the Lambs is a great film.
3. Sorry, no, watching violent films doesn't make people more violent.
4. Stop fetishizing native peoples and cultures.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gobbled up this poetic, scientific and visionary collection in one sitting. Loved all twenty-five essays, especially the ones on community, private property, and the human tendency to forget our animal nature.

Kingsolver the essayist!

[Ahtims · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great non-fiction by Kingsolver.
I usually shy away from books that make me think, books that make me uncomfortable, as my policy in life is that my leisure hours are meant to be spent in as comfortable manner as possible, mentally as well as physically. However, I couldnt resist reading, rather, listening to this book narrated by the author herself, and was drawn into the essays dissecting pertinent matters of our day-to-day lives. More important for the Americans, but so also to any human on the earth.
Another book to treasure, another book to own, if possible.
Will surely read it again, if circumstances permit.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

My friend Hannah and her brother were 20 minutes late to dinner with us because they were reading this book of essays aloud together which is A) cute and B) perplexing because these essays are mostly pretty boring. Almost all of them are about place in some way and mostly about her move from Kentucky to Arizona.

The second half is better than the first half and I liked the essays about her exhausting book tour, her chilling trip to the decommissioned nuclear silo outside Tucson, and why novels are truer than newspapers.

Don’t let this be your first, last, or only Kingsolver!!

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this as a library audiobook loan as I'd heard this was a great collection of essays by Kingsolver.

Man was I bored! If she had stuck to nature writing this might have been passable but she drones on about the drudgery of housework and bemoans being a "boomer". The only sections I enjoyed were those discussing the school librarian who sparked off her love of books and the crazy mini pigs who decimated her garden in Arizona!

The irony is that Kingsolver has a lovely voice for audiobook but her writing is just tedious as shit!
What a shame.

2 stars and that's being generous.

[Debbie H · Rating 4 out of 5]

An older book of essays from the pen of Barbara Kingsolver. Beautiful prose telling of her adventures into a volcano in Hawaii, her places in Arizona and Ky and her travels on book tours and time in The Canary Islsnds and Africa.

Honestly she writes so well she makes everything sound like a beautiful life’s adventure.

[KC · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of essays was perfect for our monthly library genre circle and it was a perfect match for me. Kingsolver covered all areas in which I have a great interest in; parenting, human rights, environment, and nature. Every story spoke to me, the words flowed so smoothly and with such great detail. I truly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to trying other Kingsolver works.

[noisy penguin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stole this from my mother-in-law about a year ago. Now I can finally give it back, but it's one of those that I liked so much that I'd rather just keep it. I haven't read anything by Kingsolver before so I have no idea how this compares to her other work, but it's a collection of shortish essays. Some are pretty funny, most are poignant, and all made me long for her writer's life. Time to get on that.

[Deanna Dailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love love love Kingsolver, and I think I love this collection of nonfiction essays even better than any of her fiction. It's written in the style of Annie Dillard, as a layperson who is interested in observation of the natural world and then exploration of underlying scientific principles. It's a beautifully written book and I reread it every several years.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I can't do it. I'm not going to be able to finish. Note to self: I don't like essays. I love Barbara Kingsolver but after trying for 8 months to finish this, I give up. I'm tapping out."

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

some really enjoyable essays and some too preachy.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Not the stories I already know, but the ones I haven't heard yet: the ones that will show me a way out of here."

Gospođa Kingsolver lepo piše. Lepo niže rečenice, ima jasnu misao od početka do kraja. Ali nekako sam predugo degustirala ovu zbirku, pa mi je u jednom momentu svega bilo i previše. Neki eseji su mi bili školski napisani, namirisali biste razrešenje već na samom početku, dok su drugi baš bili životni i više biste mogli da se poistovetite s njima (pogotovo esej gde razlaže poslove u domaćinstvu, a woman after my own heart).

Treći eseji su mi bili najnaporniji za čitanje; miks geografije i američke istorije, ali napisano na jedan njoj (verovatno) svojstven naučno-poetični način koji nije bio po mom senzibilitetu. Te eseje sam iskreno čitala sa pola mozga, ponekad duboko ogrezne u suvoparne činjenice koje (meni) nisu interesantne.

Svakako zanimljiva zbirka i drago mi je da sam je pročitala. A pošto je ovo bilo moje prvo druženje sa ovom autorkom, možda ga nastavimo, ali kroz njena dela fikcije.

[Akhila Ashru · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful essays on diverse topics with an elegant writing style. We can learn the author’s insight on a day-today incidence. Starting from nature, environment to war and politics it covers diverse topics. Touched by the intricate observations and the way author connects different topics. Read this if you have interest in science, biology & evolution.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a little late to the party but I loved the essays compiled in this book. She is such a thoughtful writer.

My absolute favorite is an essay called In the Belly of the Beast about Titan missile defense systems that were present around Tucson.

5 stars

[Hoop · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a lovely read with Robin

[Reed RJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an awesome collection of essays. Finally got the chance to finish after a busy busy busy past 2 months! Essays on traveling…family…and writing! Really enjoyed reading this. Barbara Kingsolver can do it all!

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is a collection of essays on various autobiographical topics. It is a little bit of Thoreau, though less dense, and a little bit more of Dillard, but more straightforward.

Kingsolver celebrates our animal nature. She refers to the “silly egghead of a species that we are” and goes on to say that “We tap our toes to chaste love songs about the silvery moon without recognizing them as hymns to copulation. We can dress up our drives, put them in three-piece suits or ballet slippers, but still they drive us. The wonder of it is that our culture attaches almost unequivocal shame to our animal nature.”

But then Kingsolver slips into what seems to be her own mythmaking, making us more an exception to the rest of life.* Rather than giving credit to E.O. Wilson for bringing freshness to our animal nature,** Kingsolver whiffs his thinking aside, calling it genetic determinism, and puts him into the same mold as those who want to prove superiority by the size of the skull and those whose arguments would get us into racism, sexism and aggression. She brings in the philosophical “is-ought” argument and states that the way we are is not the way we ought to be. But in some sense isn’t the reverse also true? She writes of her daughter’s emerging independence and a child’s need to develop into who they need to be. Where does that need come from and can it be not said that we ought to be who we are? Rather than genetic determinism, the argument is really about genetic tendencies and dispositions that move us one way and not another. To get to the ought side of the equation, doesn’t it help to know who we might be inclined to be? Only by bringing these to the surface can we hope to regulate ourselves in ways that work for others as well as ourselves.

A deeper assessment of who we are leads to an animal nature that Kingsolver wants to deny. She writes for example that “It is human, to want the world to see us as we think we ought to be seen,” but she doesn’t ask why this is the case, why we care, and how this may relate to an inherent need for value and rank, and how these in turn might relate to our social (tribal) nature. Isn’t our social nature also the source of our cooperative nature, which is also part and parcel of Wilson’s arguments? And, for that matter, why do we flirt, and how does this relate to “copulation” and reproduction or, alternatively, as a tool for deceit and self-advancement?

Her essay on the military (the Titan Missile Museum in Tucson leads to a discussion of nuclear warfare, and the consequences experienced by those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was painful to read. It’s a fair discussion, but she skirts the deeper, more challenging arguments.

Much of her writing is overdone. It’s almost expression for expression’s sake, and soon the eyes begin to roll. But other times she keeps her focus on the thought, the experience, the event itself, and she nails it, just nails it, with her great writing skills.

* She writes that “It’s starting to look as if the most shameful tradition of Western civilization is our need to deny we are animals…exempt from the natural order,” but her view is that while we evolved along with the rest of life, that applies to our physical being and our physiology, not behavior. She writes for example that “Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittlebush in a dry wind.” Nifty writing, but what are these needs and where did they come from, and don’t we have behavioral tendencies designed to satisfy them in particular ways?

**“Sociobiology, which made a big splash in the seventies, threw some valuable light on the field of evolutionary biology, but it also threw some hooey into the kettle, where human behavior is concerned. Edward O. Wilson produced an incendiary book, On Human Nature, in which he asserted that there are biological bases for a large number (he implies, all) of the characteristics that are general enough to be called our ‘nature,’ and which we’ve integrated into our culture, political systems, and economy. I applaud Wilson…for trying to bring humans back into the fold of nature. But he was roundly and rightly attacked, I think, for presuming that so much of human behavior-everything from armed combat to flirtation¬—is directed by our genes.”

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection of essays, rewritten and expanded versions, in many cases, from what has been previously published in various magazines, Kingsolver's skill and talent as an essayist shimmers with brilliance and sheer entertainment.

Topics have wide range, covering nature, art, values and ethics, human nature and its foibles, politics and travels. Whether she is pondering the biological clocks of hermit crabs or espousing her views on violence and objectification of women on the silver screen, or taking the reader along on the harsh realities of a not so glamorous book tour, her language is lush and poetic, flowing and vibrant, clever and memorable. I have been quoting her words to anyone who will listen, and thinking back to it as a kind of measuring stick for my personal observations.

So what moved you to begin such a boycott of violence in movies? a friend asked me. We had been talking about popular contemporary movies, and why I had made sometimes surprising choices. While my inclination had been moving in that direction for some time now, it was Kingsolver's essay, "Careful What You Let In the Door," that had pushed me into a conscious awareness of how my viewing choices affected every other part of my life, the daily and seemingly miniscule choices I make. The results of such choices have been almost immediately apparent to me. The desensitization I had experienced toward atrocities in the news, to the daily disrespect I witness in various human interactions and my regretful tolerance of it, was lifting. Newly aware, I have been surfacing as if from a deep and dumb sleep.

Kingsolver writes about her literary profession that writers may not write with politics in mind, yet "good art is political." As is hers. Words can and should move us, good art should change us, and a good writer is a person who wields a pen more powerful than any sword.

In this particular essay, Kingsolver explores the function of violence in art (or media in general), visual or literary. Too often, she notes, such violence is perpetrated against women. "It turns out," writes Kingsolver about an inadvertant movie choice, "I'd rented the convincing illusion of helpless, attractive women being jeopardized, tortured, or dead, for no good reason I could think of after it was over." Pondering this, she concludes that violence in movies or video games (or various other formats) too often appears merely for its sensationalist effect, while in literature a writer has the ability to expand upon a violent scene to fully show its consequences. Because violence always has consequences. It is the absence of those consequences in our daily media diet, separate from the realm of reality, that has led to a society that hardly blinks at its constant appearance upon the screens of our minds. All of which, she argues, with time turns us into hardened and numb creatures, willing to not only view violence, but to tolerate it, potentially even to participate in it.

So an essay moves us to change our viewing habits. Art creates positive change. But Kingsolver can just as easily write an essay that makes us laugh, as in her story of joining a literary rock band, allowing herself to look the fool for our entertainment.

In "Somebody's Baby," her message takes on a ponderous seriousness in considering how little we care for our youngest generations, even while we claim to be a family oriented society. Her call to us is to consider that it is not just the parent's job to care for the child, but it is the obligation of the the entire nation, to care for and nurture our young. We are, she writes, raising Presidents-in-training, yet our attitude is "every family for itself."

What I love about Kingsolver's essays is that they are beautifully written, literary works of art. Yet each and every one carries a deeper meaning, a message, a call to arms, even those written with the relish of humor. It is art with consequence.

[Megan Augustiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often, I become so enamored with an authorial voice that the writer in question could present to me the most unpalatable or trite subject matter and I’d ravenously lap it up, immediately yearning for more. Kingsolver’s writing falls under this umbrella. Even when I find her boomer progressivism eye-rollingly cliche, I’m willing to go along for the ride because her prose is just. that. beautiful. I found myself flinching when her early 90s liberal sensibilities caused her to skirt around the concrete demographic makeup of a Tucson neighborhood, instead obliquely referring to the abundance of Lady of Guadalupe statuary and pit bulls. Same went for the time when she referred to a Black acquaintance in an essay as, amongst other things, “articulate.” But I could endlessly devour her descriptions of misty Hawaiian islands, Saguaro-dotted desert landscapes, and the unassuming yet wondrous forests of her childhood home. Descriptions of nature usually roll off my shoulders unnoticed, paragraphs and pages hastily skipped over to get to the more interesting stuff. I would hazard to say that Kingsolver’s descriptions, in contrast, are so achingly beautiful that I savored these parts most of all. In fact, while I began this novel with a more intellectually driven investment in environmentalism (and a scared shitless outlook on climate change), I left this novel truly in love with the natural world.