A review by northstar
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

5.0

I am so glad I decided to reread Barbara Kingsolver's debut. Although the scope is narrower than Kingsolver's more recent novels, her themes of self-sufficiency and identity and even her love of plants appear in this first book. Taylor Greer leaves her home and mother in rural Kentucky and lands in Tucson, Arizona, minus two tires and plus a toddler girl who was thrust into her car late one night outside an Oklahoma bar. She gets a job from the tire shop owner, who also shelters Central American refugees, meets a fellow Kentucky expat and starts to build a new family at the edge of the desert.