'A triumphant return to the southern Appalachians of her own childhood.' - Orlando Sentinel and ardent commitment to the supremacy of nature.Barbara Kingsolver remains a voice readers have come to respect and love, a writer we will keep reading for as long as she continues to grace us with her bounty.” - San Francisco Chronicle “A blend of breathtaking artistry, encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world. “ sexy, lyrical fifth novel renders our solitary yearnings with a finely trained eye and ear.” - People tenderness, humour and earthy spirituality.” - Christian Science Monitor Resonates with the author’s overarching wisdom and passion.” - New York Times “A lush, bountiful, opinionated novel of social conscience” - Washington Post Book World 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. 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. 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. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Over the course of one long summer, these characters find connections to one another, and to the land, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one piece of life on earth.Read by the author.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. 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 the future holds. Down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches them from an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and her solitary life. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives in southern Appalachia. Triumphing once again, Barbara Kingsolver has written a beautiful new novel: a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself

A prodigal summer