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Summary: Ms. Kingsolver's glance into Appalachia
Review: Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors. Pigs in Heaven, The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible, etc. - all are excellent novels. This one is not her best, but it is still a lovely read. The book takes us to the Appalachian Mountains where we meet three characters whose lives intertwine without their knowledge over the course of one "prodigal summer."Deanna Wolfe, forest ranger in charge of Zebulon Mountain, has lived alone with minimal human contact on the mountaintop since her divorce. While I liked the character, she is the least developed of the three. We never really know what motivates some of her fears. Eddie Bondo, the man who threatens to change her secure existence, is even more shadowy. Lusa Landowski, wife of Cole Widener, a local farmer, learns that everything is not always as it seems as she discovers over time that her husband's family's opinion of her is not what she thought. Lusa learns that in order to have a content life, she must depend on herself and her own instincts. My favorite character was Garnett Walker, last scion of the Walker dynasty, whose family once owned everything. Approaching his 8th decade, Garnett learns, the hard way, to come to terms with aging, new ideas that challenge his lifelong beliefs, and the bane of his existence since his wife's death, his neighbor, Nannie Rawley. While I agree that the ecological subcontext of the novel is a bit overbearing from time to time, it is the main topic that threads the three characters together, and is therefore necessary. Although industry is fast encroaching, these people all live in one of the few remaining parts of the country that is still basically a "hunting and gathering" society - so their ties to the land and all that lives on it are still strong. Each chapter heading repeats as we return to each story line: 'Predator' takes us to Deanna's mountain, 'Moth Love' to Lusa's farm, and 'Old Chestnuts' to Garnett's orchard. I liked this approach to the book's organization. Overall, the novel is a methodic, well-written glance into a disappearing culture few of us have experienced before. This is what Ms. Kingsolver does so well - takes us on journeys into new lives - and makes us believe we've really been there.
Rating: 
Summary: Beguiling story of a summer in Appalachia
Review: Kingsolver has a moral and ecological message to deliver in Prodigal Summer, and at times the preaching is a bit on the heavy side. But oboy, as she's giving us a serious lesson about the inner and cooperative workings of the natural world, what a wonderful story she weaves. The author focuses on one mountain in rural Appalachia (which the natives pronounce Appa-LATCH-a, I learned) and the valley at its base. She peoples it with 3 inner-related 'families,' to use the word loosely, whose connections are gradually strengthened and woven together by the end.
First is Deanna Wolfe, a 40+ forest ranger, native of the valley, and staunch coyote lover. Into her world comes Eddie Bondo, a bounty hunter 20 yrs her junior, with whom she has a push-pull, love-hate affair.
Then there's Lusa, a "bugologist," newly married and quickly widowed scientist from Roanoke; she's saddled with her husband's 5 sisters and a determination not to become a tobacco farmer. Two wounded kids whose mother is dying and whose father has abandoned them are added to the family stew.
And finally, we meet crusty old farmer Garnett Walker, who is trying to breed a blight-resistant strain of chestnut before he dies - and his arch enemy is Nannie Rawley, a crusader of organic farming.
Readers will be seduced not only by Kingsolver's story-telling powers, but also by her powers of observation and depth of knowledge of the natural world. Highest recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Delicately woven with earthly connections (human and nature)
Review: This book moves ambles along much like the lives and surroundings of the characters. I savored the pace and the artistry of the weave. Kingsolver takes you on a journey of the senses, explores the interconnectedness, and the choices found in simple life. Each of the three story lines are interconnected--you discover the threads slowly. Having lived in a farm community and on the edge of the wilderness, I have encountered many of the characters and topics found in this book--I found it beautifully done. Definately worth your time, but it is a nature walk through the forest not a trot down the path in the middle. So, if you are looking for popular fiction or entertainment read something like Evanovich, if you want to delve into an artful weave rich in description but without intense complications--then pick up this book.
Rating:
Summary: "Every choice is a world made new for the chosen."
Review: This beautifully written book, along with the critically acclaimed Poisonwood Bible, which preceded it, firmly establishes Barbara Kingsolver as one of America's great living authors. Prodigal Summer is at once immensely heartwarming, painfully tragic, hilariously funny, and filled with beauty and love. It is a novel not only driven by characters, but also by setting and environment. Indeed, the rugged, rural mountains of Appalachia are such a vivid image in this novel and such an integral part of what the novel is about that they seem to take on the role of a central character. And the ever-present theme of nature, the environment, and the interdependence of all of nature's creatures is so strongly felt throughout the book that one cannot help but feel that each tree, flower, coyote, moth, bird, and snake is indeed a character as well. The beauty of Prodigal Summer, and of Kingsolver's writing in general, is the way in which she creates rich, complex, characters that the reader cannot help caring about. Here we meet Deanna, a Forest Service ranger living a solitary existence in a primitive cabin in the mountains. Her life experiences have taught her to be distrustful of men, and she feels at home in the wilderness with all of natures creatures as her companions, whom it is her responsibility to monitor and protect. She is especially fond of the coyotes, a predator that she feels a responsibility to protect from the ignorant poachers who mistakenly believe they are ridding the area of a threat to farming life. She is joined early in the novel by Eddie, a wandering coyote hunter twenty years her junior, and the ensuing love affair is more at the same time a passionate romance and a battle of wills. Just a few miles away, we come to know Lusa, a city girl who has married into the conservative, traditional Widener farming family. She quickly finds herself widowed and living on the family's land, now her own. As she struggles with her grief and with the ghosts that visit her home, she also fights to win the respect of a family that has always viewed her as an outsider. Last we have Garnett, a crusty old curmudgeon, set in his ways after 80 years and hardened by the loss of his wife and his failures as a father. He is quietly obsessed with saving the quickly disappearing chestnut trees on his property, in such a way that one feels he is perhaps trying to leave one last legacy of his time on the earth, coming soon to an end. His neighbor and foil, a free-spirited naturalist named Nannie, is a constant thorn in the side of this "God-fearing, sanctimonious old fart," as she might call him. And yet underlying their neighborly conflicts is a respect and admiration that transcends the pettiness of their quarrels. These thumbnail sketches do not come close to describing the complexity and beauty of each of these characters. Each is incredibly human in his or her own way, with hopes and dreams, fears and insecurities, failings and weaknesses. And then there is Nature, that ever-present element that Kingsolver elevates to the level of a main character. Here her degree in biology and her extensive research are evident. She beautifully weaves her descriptions of the Appalachian environment into her narrative, and seamlessly injects a moral message without seeming overbearing. One cannot walk away from this novel without recognizing how truly interdependent our world is - how each creature, large or small, plays its own important role. This theme of connectivity, elegant and thoughtful in its own right, serves also as a complement to the eventual connectivity that unfolds between the novel's seemingly isolated main characters. As Kingsolver so eloquently puts it, "Every choice is a world made new for the chosen." Each step, both figurative and literal, that we take in life will affect countless other creatures around us. And that message, in the end, is what makes this not just a beautiful novel but also a profound and important work.
Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Read!
Review: Just days after recovering from the miscarriage of my first baby, I started reading this novel. My plans had been to save it as one of my "must reads" for this coming Summer, but after coming off days of bedrest, I grew anxious and openend the inviting cover. Four days and four hundred and something pages later, I have to acknowledge this novel as one of the BEST I have ever read. The author writes of captivating characters that make it difficult to put this book down. I laughed... I cried... I was comforted by her unbelievable way of touching a healing heart. I commend her for her talent, and highly recommend this to anyone who's been searching for that one book you know you will always remember.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended, With Caveats
Review: First off, let me preface this by saying that I am not a particular rabid fan of Barbara Kingsolver. I have read a couple of her books, and had mixed feelings about them. I enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible and recommended it to several friends. I found Pigs in Heaven to be unbearably preachy and didactic, attempting to take on extremely complicated issues via some almost obstinately flat characters. This book was recommended to me by several people, including my own mother, whose literary taste i usually share--i recommend it, but with caveats. It takes place in Zebulon County (particularly in the forestland up on Zebulon Mountain and the townships and farms beneath in Zebulon Valley). I'm still not quite sure if Kingsolver pins down exactly where in "Southern Appalachia" it's supposed to be set, but based on the geographical references--one character is from the "big city" of Lexington, KY, and another refers to the close proximity of Knoxville and Johnson City, TN--I assume its the mountains along the eastern KY/TN border. It follows three basic storylines. The first is that of Deanna Wolfe, a forest ranger living in solitude on Zebulon Mountain, observing the wildlife, keeping the hiking and hunting trails clear, occasionally confronting hunters off-season. She comes across a wanderer named Eddie Bondo, whom she determines is hunting a coyote family she's been studying; of course, she's been all dried up alone and unlaid on a mountaintop so long she can't decide whether to hate him or screw him, or both. I liked her development as a character over the course but found her "relationship" with Mr. Bondo (who seemed to be pretty flat, to me) to be dubious at best. The second is that of Lusa Landowski, an entomologist (bug scientist) from Lexington of mixed-culture parentage (Polish Jewish father and Palestinian mother) who moved to Zebulon Valley when she marries local farmer Cole Widener. At the start of the book she finds herself widowed, trying to eke out a living on the Widener family farm, and faced with an array of awkwardness and outright hostility from her husband's family. The third involves a sort of minor feud between elderly farmers whose property lines abut, an eccentric organic orchard tender named Nannie Rawley and a pesticide-loving former 4H teacher and chestnut crossbreeder, Garnett Walker. By the end of the book, Kingsolver has drawn you some beautiful pictures of the land, what makes it wonderful and what makes it sad. She's portrayed the quirks of these people, transcribed the lilt and meter of mountain speech, aptly set down succinct plain-folks colloquialisms, and she's shown you how the three seemingly entirely different stories are in fact interwoven threads of lives that cross and recross one another in the weave of the Zebulon Valley tapestry. For this, i loved this book. I wasn't so keen, however, on how strictly drawn the "rights" and "wrongs" were. There is a very strong ecological agenda in this book (and, let me say that i myself am "in Kingsolver's camp" about it; i do agree with her position on revitalizing mountain ecology), and Kingsolver pretty much cracks the reader in the jaw with her position. The insufferable, closed-minded, and/or pompous characters make the ecologically "transgressive" choices, and they have to be patiently taught right-thinking by the independent, free-thinking, hippie-treehugging characters. Now, again, I'm somewhat of a hippie treehugger myself, and the characters aren't entirely black and white, two dimensional cartoons--I just felt that perhaps the conflicts on an ecological level could have had a bit more depth. I found myself wanting to know more about *why* the characters who were portrayed as doing "the wrong thing" had chosen to do so, since they didn't seem stupid and in need of hand-holding to me, and i wanted more of a justification on their behalves than just "they're obstinate, uneducated, and/or misled." It's unfortunate, because had she successfully woven this ecological thread into the book, i'd have called it perfect. I did think the book benefitted from Kingsolver's background as a biologist; details about the behavioral patterns of the wildlife and plant life, coyote family structure, insect control via predation, extinction of breeds like the American chestnut and the ways in which people live in harmony or conflict with the land definitely broadened the scope of the novel and made it more interesting. Read this book for these things--the word-drawn postcards from the mountains, the nuances of interrelationships among mountain families and "outsiders", sounds and smells and troubles and lives. It is worth it, IMO, despite the ham-handed, preachy treatment of ecology.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to get into..but worth it
Review: A Prodigal Summer written By Barbara Kingsolver is a very well written book. The language used in the book is so descriptive it is poetic. Though the writing is beautiful it caused me to lose concentration in the very first and last chapter.
After I worked past the beginning I was very interested in two out of three of the main plots in the book. The most interesting plot was about Deanna, she is a lady who works for the forest service. She lives there alone in the mountain right above a small town.
The second plot tells a story about a lady named Lusa. Lusa goes through a series of hardships,she works her way through depression and the harsh opinions of her husband's family.
The third plot tells the story of an ornery old man who isn't fond at all of his next door neighbor Nanny .In the beginning I didn't care for the plot but eventually the story slowly tells of his past and throughout the book he learns to be more accepting of Nanny and her way of thinking.
At the end you see how the three plots begin to collide.
All around the book was interesting and through most of it, the book kept me wanting to pick it up again
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Summary: Loved it!
Review: I like all of Barbara Kingsolver's books with THE POISONWOOD BIBLE being my favorite. This book was, in my opinion, entirely different. Well, different in tone and plot--the writing was still as excellent as PWB. I loved the characters in this novel, and while they were three deminisional, I wish Kingslover had given us a little more background on what made them "tick." The settings in this book are so real and profound that you'll be reminded of some other great reads like THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD or possibly some of Fannie Flagg's novels--think FRIED GREEN TOMATOES. And while the subject matter is entirely different, there's still that ring of truth; that feel of the southern outdoors; those intense and quirky human relationships that always make Kingsolver's works leap off the page. I highly recommend this great read.
Rating:
Summary: a little boring
Review: i thought it was supposed to be three love stories but there are only two. the old man didn't like that one woman (although my boyfriend said that was a form of love) and the other lady's husband died. i didn't like this book much.
Rating: 
Summary: should be "prodigal author!"
Review: this is the worst book Kingsolver has written. It's shallow. I wonder why it was ever written.... contract?
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