The Bean Trees: A Novel
Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.
Available for the first time in mass-market, this edition of Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling novel, The Bean Trees, will be in stores everywhere in September. With two different but equally handsome covers, this book is a fine addition to your Kingsolver library.
Customer Review: Ironically it all works out in the end
Have you ironicaly ever been handed something that you were trying to avoid? In this book, The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, "Taylor Greer" or Missie runs or drives from her towns frequent young pregnancy histroy. On her journey to become something better than everybody back home, her fate brings her a child. We experience, as readers, the tradegy going through Taylor's mind as she deals with this new life put before her. Taylors from the small town and now living in Arizona she is eye opened with the racist acts more common in that part of the country. Taylor and the child, Turtle, meet many people who change their life and take small things that seem worthless and turn them into something beautiful. I would deffinately reccomend this book to every young teenage girl or mother. It givs great advice how to deal with different obstacles and many new realizations of our world that are put before the reader. Looking for a book that makes you appreciate yourself and others more? Pick up The Bean Trees and get yourself thrown into the fast moving life of Taylor Greer.
Customer Review: A Remarkable Guide to Life
Taylor is a high spirited and strong willed girl whose whole life has been lead in Kentucky. Taylor had three goals in her life: not to get pregnant, to leave Pittman County, and to change her name. She ended up buying a '55 Volkswagen bug and leaving Pittman County behind. She ends up with the name Taylor which she got from the first town she stopped in. While on the desolate plains of Oklahoma she has a two year old Cherokee child placed into her care. Later on Taylor finds out the girl was physically abused and named the child Turtle after the way she clings on to everything like a snapping turtle. Taylor ends up in Tucson, Arizona where she meets up with a tough strange lady named Mattie who deals with illegal immigrants, a paranoid and self conscious mother Lou Ann who thinks there is nothing safe in the world, and Esparza and Esperanza, a Guatemalan couple, that help Taylor find out who she really is. Taylor is lead through the hardships and wonders of life with her friends. They help her through life in the way that the rhizobia help the bean trees through life.