Reading Pathways: Barbara Kingsolver

I had a bitch of a time trying to decide between Small Wonder and High Tide in Tucson for this number-one slot. Both titles are personal essay collections that have the most incredible sense of place, and the latter fueled a lifelong preoccupation with Arizona. But when I flipped back through my copies of both, it was Small Wonder (2002) that was filled with dog-eared pages and underlined passages. One such passage: “The sight of a vermilion flycatcher leaves us breathless every time—he’s not just a bird, he’s a punctuation mark on the air, printed in red ink, read out loud as a gasp.” I mean…am I obsessed with this from a writerly standpoint? Maybe. But this group of essays that are meant as “an extended love song to the world we still have” ably introduces readers to the Barbara Kingsolver ethos, one marked by awe and wonder for the world we live in, and a deep awareness of all the ways in which we are failing it.

Kingsolver easily moves back and forth between fiction and nonfiction. And while I’ve long leaned toward a preference for narrative nonfiction, the novel Prodigal Summer (2000) remains my favorite of her books. This multiple-perspective novel bops back and forth between its three main protagonists, each of whom is living in the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. As we follow along with their loosely connected stories, we are taken on a journey of love, loneliness, and connection — between humans, yes, but also between humans and nature. Again, this is Kingsolver’s pet topic (the ways in which we interact with the natural world, for better or for worse), and this particular tale reflects on it so skillfully, while also bringing all of the feels.

My god, this final slot was even more difficult to fill than the first one. I wanted simply to throw in my other favorite of hers (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), but since this blog series is supposed to act as an introduction to new-to-you authors, I finally determined that it made more sense to include what felt like the true predecessor to the award-winning Demon Copperhead. As with her most recent book, The Poisonwood Bible (1998) is an epic tale that spans lifetimes and tackles huge topics. It follows a missionary family that moves to postcolonial Africa in 1959, a move that proves to be their undoing. Touching upon colonialism and culpability, the book presents the perspectives of the five family members who followed their patriarch on his flawed mission.