The Bean Trees

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pure comfort reading. Kingsolver's early novel is a heartwarmer, entertaining, vivid and beautifully, starkly imagined.

I had remembered the young Turtle's slow emergence from her shell and Taylor's grease-stained tough-girl persona. But I had forgotten the dark undertones, broken refugees from Guatemala and the politics of asylum.

After years away this was a delicious evening--I picked it up and read it straight through from cover to cover, with a few cups of herbal tea and cookies in between.

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