The Bean Trees

Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Harper & Row, 1988
Pages: 232
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a three-year-old Native American girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in seemingly empty places.

Review: Generally speaking, I don't love coming of age novels, but I see this one raved about in various book groups I'm in on social media. For a novel to stand the test of time like this, and be required reading in high school, I thought it must be worth reading.

It took me a second to realize very early on that at the heart of this novel are two women whose lives will eventually converge. 

One minor detail at the beginning of the novel, kind of threw the whole book off for me - a young woman is given a baby, just handed a baby one day and somehow everything works out. It felt unrealistic, even for a book set in the 1980s.