Spring Fever Strikes

[Kendra]

This month Coffee Talk is reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees. The book features some terrifically quirky characters and an intriguing plot, but it also features a lot of gardening lingo and the vividly described setting is in Arizona. The setting of a book is sometimes so wonderful, that you forgive the author if you don't care for a character or two, or if you can't quite follow the plot 100% of the time. Can anyone think of a book where setting was your favorite thing about it?

[Joseph]

'The Good Earth' by Pearl Buck is a terrific setting-driven novel, but in a place unfamiliar to some of us: China. The main character, Wang Lung is a farmer who has married a freed slave who has come from a family of the nobility. The book is about how they come together as a couple under different circumstances, and they suffer their deprivations as two married people. The book truly places the reader in the crowded Chinese countryside of the early twentieth century.

[Rachel]

I loved the scenery in Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr. This is the first of the Anna Pigeon novels, where the main character has left a successful job in NYC to become a National Park Service Ranger and seek solace in the environment. The book is rich with the beauty of the Guadalupe Mountains National Park and its wildlife. Barr does an amazing job of linking the setting the book's characters.