Prodigal Summer: A Novel

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about farm life in the Appalachia. The stories start out as separate pieces, but then eventually start to intertwine just a little. There are a lot of other reviews that have done a great job summarizing the book so I am just going to leave some thoughts. I didn’t buy the Deanna and Eddie Bondo romance. The parts where she was having deep discussions with him about the importance of coyotes or when she was wondering the woods herself were so beautiful and detailed that I just loved getting lost in the book. However, I had a hard time believing that she would even want to be intimate with someone so against her personal beliefs. It did not make Eddie at all a very appealing person to me and it made me wonder how she could stand him being around. He was almost an intruder in my opinion and the story may have been more intriguing if he were. After Cole died, Lusa looks into putting together a goat herd to sell the meat to her family in New York City. I loved that Kingsolver had this character do something original. After having a long conversation about it with Little Rickie, you would think that she would need his help getting the goats. Instead, Kingsolver skipped over this and she just went and got the goats herself and it all seemed pretty seamless. It would have been interesting to hear more about the new challenges of raising goats; especially being an inexperienced farmer. I would have loved for Rickie to be 18 or 19 and Kingsolver blossoming that romance a little more. The introspective discussion after Eddie killed a turkey left me wishing I was there to say a few things. On page 325, Eddie kills a turkey in the woods. Deanna writes it off saying that it was a male and probably was old or sick enough that it would have made a meal for a bobcat or other predator on the mountain. Eddie teases her surprised she is not a vegetarian for all her talk about caring for the animals on the mountain. She says the concept of vegetarianism is not so simple, because to farm wheat a lot of animals get killed by the machinery. I know this is Kingsolver’s opinion being inserted here, but vegetarianism and veganism is not about purity, it’s about doing the least amount of harm in this world as possible. Much of the grains that are grown are to feed animals that are raised for meat. Less meat, less wheat, less mice and rabbits that are killed and probably more forests don’t need to be cut down. Also, earlier Deanna talks about cats being unnatural predators. I agree with this; however, in this discussion about the turkey, how are humans not also considered unnatural predators? Wasn’t she denying the bobcat or coyote a meal? The meditations on ecology, wildlife preservation, forests, and organic farming made me believe this was a better environmental novel than Overstory. I read Overstory and even though that book started out pretty good, it petered out for me as if the author got bored with the story and the characters. This book held my attention the entire time as if Kingsolver was in love with the story and all the details. This book deserved an award. Last, an epilogue would have been nice. I did not really like the last chapter of the book. I didn’t understand it. I would have loved instead for there to be an epilogue on what happens to these characters after ten years. If I could write it, Deanna and her daughter inherit Nannie Rawley’s farm and she continues to grow organic produce. Garnett’s grandchildren continue with the Chestnut farm and they achieve the beginnings of a grove that is free of Chestnut blight. Lusa and Rickie after a few years eventually do marry and start a family continuing the Widener name on the ancestral farm. I think the stories were all going in this direction, but it would have been nice to see the narratives through to the end.

This book has 3 different character stories which I’m usually not a fan of that writing style but I loved each story as they were unique and interesting. This book makes you think a lot about life and death but not in a morbid way but from a curious standpoint. I feel the book ended on a cliffhanger, eager to see if the author will continue the character’s stories.

I’m a fan of this author’s writing, and this is certainly one of the best. Well worth reading for its many insights into a world most of us city dwellers neither see nor know about.

Not many books I read get five stars. This does because it is a beautifully written book and because the stories are touching, small and deeply intimate. I read it like letters from an old friend, not wanting it to end and when it did, tearing up because the prose was so heart-felt and meaningful I knew I would miss the characters, knew I would miss the summer and would wish to hear from them again. That's the best kind of book, where you feel a sense of loss at its completion. I just held my kindle, wiping my eyes and had to read the last few pages again because it affected me so powerfully to let go of these people and their stories. I loved them even though while I read the book there may have been things I didn't necessarily like about them. The most touching story to me was Predator, the story of Forest Service game warden Deanna Wofle and her itinerant love interest Eddie Bondo (what a name). She's forty-seven years old, so lonely she doesn't even know it and meets twenty-eight year old, beautiful, masculine, sexy hunter Eddie Bondo in the forest and falls in love and lust in a way that terrifies her. Their love scenes are worth the price of admission - I never read anything quite so pastorally erotic in my life. Wow, well done, Barbara Kingsolver. She's got some hidden sexy depths that's for sure. Stunningly gorgeous writing. My next favorite story is Moth Love about a young woman coming to terms being part of a farming family as she is a stranger from the city and a stranger religiously and ethnically. It's a charming and emotionally heartfelt story of love, loss and yes, moths. The final pages choked me up. The final story (they are all loosely intertwined) is Old Chestnuts about exactly that, two old folks fighting over trees, pesticides, organic farming and falling for each other in the process (it is so sweet and adorable to watch it unfold). There is quite a bit of heavy-handed moralizing on farming, forestry, organic farming, even a bit on Christianity and animal welfare and that can get tiresome but read through it and let it mean something to you or not but do read through to get to the human elements of the story. Funny thing in a pastoral that the humanity is what comes through the most. This book will be with me forever, a part of me now, like every gorgeous summer.

Barbara Kingsolver is undeniably an excellent and committed writer. By that I mean her prose is lovely and she has something to say - this is not fluffy drivel. Though I can't claim to be expert at the subject matter, I do believe she puts some time into research, due to her books' varied cultural and historical settings. Nonetheless, Ms. Kingsolver is a writer of fiction, and not, to my knowledge, a scientist, anthropologist, biologist, or other subject matter expert. She appears to be hopping on the environmental bandwagon with a bit of a vengeance - I understand her newest novel, "Flight Behavior," has a strong climate change theme. While a certain perspective, criticism, or opinion is warranted in a novel (perhaps even necessary), there is a fine line which should not be crossed. Or, if proving a point is the author's main objective, perhaps a different genre would be more appropriate? While reading "Prodigal Summer" there were times when I had that "burning in your ears" sensation that Kingsolver was preaching to her readers. The prose and visual narrative were strong enough that I was able to ignore these parts and not become offended. Eventually I ended up ignoring what seemed to be whole chapters, or at least pages, which were filled with nothing but tiresome, predictable conversations between the novel's characters that allowed Kingsolver to spout her environmental agenda. Some of these conversations were so redundant and simple, I felt like she was talking down to the reader. With the exception of the chapters devoted to the two old neighbors - some of those interactions had me laughing out loud. These chapters seemed the most well-crafted. While the environmental/farmer/pesticide/natural debate was still a factor, it was presented in a way that seemed to naturally fit the thoughts and actions of the characters. The two elderly characters were fully developed, and the theme supported their interactions, rather than the other way around. But overall, the environmental facts were clumsily presented and weakened the storyline. The characters and their situations, as profound, rich, and colorful as they could have been, seemed of secondary importance, merely acting as a platform from which to prove a point. I believe Kingsolver has the ability to subtley convey that message without alienating her readers with lengthy diatribes and staged debates. This could have been a beautiful, poetic novel, a love letter to Mother Nature and her Divine Wisdom. I'm very disappointed that it wasn't.

I've listened to this book on tape twice and was mesmerized by Barbara's voice. Fantastic. Then I bought it on Kindle and read it and enjoyed it, but not quite as much. The natural events described might be offensive to sensitive eyes and ears, as is the insinuation that evolution could play a role in the miracle of creation, but the masterful writing style and the beauty of nature shine through. The three accounts of disparate residents of Egg Fork are interwoven, and it takes patience to discern the connection....but well worth the wait. I loved the characters, living their lives the best way they knew at the time, albeit in ignorance to some degree, but so very human and real. There's no violence or offensive language, but the behavior of the mountain ranger was on a moral level with the coyotes she protected. As an evolutionist, it made the point the author intended, that humans are animals (and too often they act that way) and that part I find offensive. Therefore, I don't recommend the book to my Christian friends. But it's still a masterpiece of writing and storytelling.

Reflective of the author's biology background, this novel is a paean to nature: its rawness, mystery, fecundity, delicate balance, etc. Set in rural Appalachia, the author is determined to make her ecological points through the interleaved stories of three resilient women: Deanna Wolfe, 47, a ranger living in isolation on a mountain, Lusa Widener, 28, newly widowed and living on a tobacco farm, and Nannie Rawley, 75, the operator of an organic apple orchard. All of these women, whether through academic training or experience, are opposed to any actions that upset nature's ecological balance, such as the indiscriminate killing of predators or the use of pesticides. An essential part of their lives is their resistance to or education of those, especially men, who actively or inadvertently do harm to the eco-system. The author hardly shrinks from the necessitous sexual, reproductive elements of nature; her characters do not escape its pull. The normally wary Deanna, especially when it comes to protecting a fledgling coyote family, is breathlessly overwhelmed by the rugged, 28 year old Eddie Bondo, an itinerant hunter, who simply appears one day on her mountain. Lusa, the despised widow of the favored youngest son of a family of Appalachian rednecks, finds her sexual awareness awakened by the raw attraction of a teen-age nephew. The relentless cycles of birth, growth, decay, and death across seasons and years is well presented by lyrical descriptions and discussions of the life phases of moths, beetles, coyotes, plants, herbivores, carnivores, etc. The characters seem at times to be more mouthpieces for the author's environmental agenda, than fully fleshed out. The men are for the most part set pieces. As it turns out, the characters are connected. However, the tribulations of Lusa in recovering from the death of her husband constitutes the main plot thread. Over all, this book has a certain sensuality and is not without its educative aspects, but is not a particularly riveting story.

Enjoyed this book. It was tough to put it down. Kingsolver has a very descriptive style that paints a great picture for this story.