FROM THE PUBLISHER
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the countryside, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. With the complexity that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver's finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama, and ideas that render it an inspiring work of fiction.

When the huge oaks and maples that surround me here in the southern Appalachian mountains were not even tiny seedlings, when the American Chestnut tree blossomed in an glorious snowy display across the land, there was bird that inhabited these parts and regions further south. It had a wingspan of 4 feet , a pale eye, a distinctive call and a large pale beak. It was called familiarly, the Lord Bird, because folks were known to utter "Lord, what a bird!" when they spied it. The Ivory billed woodpecker was an awesome sigh, indeed, I am told. But the advance of humans depleted this marvelous bird's natural habitat, so bird lovers such as myself may never hear the call, and may never be able to see this incredible creature. (I hold out hope the reports of last year that there still may be some Lord Birds in a swamp in Louisiana are true. And I fervently wish that there may be enough of them to reproduce and re-establish the population. But even if this were so, I shall only probably see the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, and the Carolina Parakeet in my dreams and in drawings by Mr Audubon.) But lest you think I am digressing, I am not. I have just finished the last pages of Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, set in these same mountains, not too far from where I perch. All I can say is, "Lord, What a Book."

I will admit that the first part of the book took me a little time to find and follow the rhythm. I'm not exactly sure why, but it did. I even almost put it aside, deciding it wasn't for me. But I gave it a few more pages and then i was hooked. Kingsolver interweaves three separate sections and a multitude of stories together in this tale of a mountain, a valley and a summer. The human inhabitants of the stories are fascinating, but it was the natural world, flora and fauna that sucked me right in.

To read this book here was an added treat. Many a page I would read her description of the land, and then look up to see the very scene she had described unfolding before me. I felt as if the book was a gift for me, personally, tucked up in my mountain haven, to immerse myself within. Like a fine wine, a satisfying meal, or a spectacular piece of music that sets your heart soaring.

I wonder would I have felt differently reading this back in my beloved Charleston, with it's sultry salt tinged air, seagulls and palmettos. For me, much of the magic was the oneness I felt with Kingsolver's setting...a sense of the place we share.

I am not sure what I will do with this lovely book. I already have plans to trot into town and see if I can get a copy for the cabin's bookshelf so that I won't be so reluctant to pass this one on. I may ring it, if there is interest, though I think, from earlier comments, many have read this already.

Lord God, what a book.

Acquired during a visit to Bookczuk. Will read and release.