Bean Trees, The : Barbara Kingsolver

A bestseller that has come to be regarded as an American classic, The Bean Trees is the novel that launched Barbara Kingsolver’s remarkable literary career “As clear as air. It is the Southern novel taken West, its colors as translucent and polished as one of those slices of rose agate from a desert shop.” —New York Times Book Review Meet Taylor Greer. Clear-eyed and spirited, she grew up poor in rural Kentucky with two goals: to avoid pregnancy and to get away. She succeeds on both counts and buys a ’55 Volkswagen and heads west. But by the time our heroine pulls up on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona, at an auto repair shop called Jesus Is Lord Used Tires that also happens to be a sanctuary for Central American refugees, she’s “inherited” a three-year-old American Indian girl name Turtle. What follows—as Taylor meets the human condition head-on—is at the heart of this memorable novel about love and friendship, abandonment and belo