Prodigal Summer

I direct an MFA in Nature Writing, and something by Barbara Kingsolver is always on my syllabus. This gorgeous novel is perhaps my longest-standing favorite, though. It takes place in Appalachia and is full of that area's natural history.

On top of that, the main character is a wildlife biologist—so there’s plenty to learn from her! There’s an exciting plot, and lots of love stories (I do like a good love story), but what I love most is the underlying ethic of good living on planet Earth. 

This is my favorite of Kingsolver’s books. I fell in love with so many of the characters, even some of the crustier sort. I also fell in love with the Appalachian mountains and valleys where they worked, studied, and sometimes struggled.

This is a poignant book about families and landscapes, and how we must find our own place in each.

I love this book because it evokes the rich tapestry of the land I grew up in and the people I grew up around, capturing in typical Kingsolver fashion those liminal edges between feral and tame, local and outsider, privileged and not so privileged.

Set in the Southern Appalachians, it tracks three characters’ lives over the course of a single, fecund summer. Science plays a big role, but so does faith, as the characters come to terms with gospels of their own making. As Kingsolver writes, “Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”

Prodigal Summer is a poignant novel that interweaves three unforgettable stories of humans’ interdependency with nature.

A wildlife biologist and land steward excitedly sites coyotes on her forested turf; two neighbors feuding over the use of herbicides; and a former “bug expert” turned widowed farmer’s wife. I admire how these fictious tales offer keen-eyed examples of how stories centered around nature can be braided into everyday fiction.

Set in Appalachia, this novel also celebrates an underappreciated corner of our country (too many books are set in New York, in my opinion). As a novelist, Barbara Kingsolver’s books are among my… show more.

I could not put together a list such as this without including a work by Kingsolver, whom I so associate with writing that embraces the natural environment.

When I first shared my own writing, readers would ask me if I knew her work. I have a somewhat sparse style; Kingsolver, on the other hand, uses rich detail of natural phenomenon to great effect, making her novel lush. She also makes accessible simple to complex biological concepts.

In this novel, by juxtaposing biology and lush detail with the stories of the three main characters, she draws parallels between the “natural world”… show more.

It is an erotic romance of many species. This lush, exuberant novel interweaves the stories of three strong twentieth-century women whose lives are shaped both by their lusts and by the sights, sounds, tastes, scents, and textures of the southern Appalachian landscape. The women’s lives mingle in turn with the lives of others similarly influenced by their lusts and by different sensations of that landscape—among them moths, mice, birds, and immigrant coyotes. The shifts of perspective among Kingsolver’s vividly and voluptuously imagined human and nonhuman protagonists are both disorienting and fascinating. Of this work Kingsolver later writes, “Reader, hear my confession: I have written… show more.

One of my all-time favorite books, Prodigal Summer is a compelling, gorgeous, and sometimes steamy story as well as a very thoughtful examination of our role as stewards of the land. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, is studying a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the Appalachian Mountains where she lives in an isolated cabin as a forest ranger. Her solitary life is disrupted by an intriguing and infuriating young hunter who invades her private spaces and her thoughts. I loved this book for the story and the characters. What I learned about coyotes and the importance… show more.

Barbara Kingsolver writes what I think is some of the most beautiful prose of any American novelist. She immediately sucks you in with interesting characters interacting in a complex and rich interconnected world. With this book, she sets these characters within the complex web of understanding and exploring the interconnections of the natural world and we begin with one central character and experience an outward spiral of interpersonal, social, and ecological interweaving.  

Prodigal Summer: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver is set in my favorite place and time—1930s Appalachia. It’s my go-to southern novel I’ve read three times at different stages of my life. Each time I was transported in different ways thanks to Kingsolver masterfully interweaving three plots. Released in 2000, the tale still feels relevant and timeless.