Authors: Barbara Kingsolver

The Bean Trees (24 page)

BOOK: The Bean Trees

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I looked down the hall. “I can’t really talk here. We’ll be home in two days at the outside, and I’ll tell you everything then, okay? But it’s going to take all night and a lot of junk food. Do you know what? I missed your salsa. The medium, though, not the firecracker style.”

Lou Ann’s breath came out like a slow leak in a tire. “Taylor, I was scared to death you’d come back without her.”

We had cleared Oklahoma City and were out on the plain before sundown. It felt like old times, heading into the low western horizon. I let Turtle see the adoption certificate and she looked at it for a very long time, considering that there were no pictures on it.

“That means you’re my kid,” I explained, “and I’m your mother, and nobody can say it isn’t so. I’ll keep that paper for you till you’re older, but it’s yours. So you’ll always know who you are.”

She bobbed her head up and down like a hen, with her eyes fixed on something out the window that only she could see.

“You know where we’re going now? We’re going home.”

She swung her heels against the seat. “Home, home, home, home,” she sang.

The poor kid had spent so much of her life in a car, she probably felt more at home on the highway than anywhere else. “Do you remember home?” I asked her. “That house where we live with Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray? We’ll be there before you know it.”

But it didn’t seem to matter to Turtle, she was
happy where she was. The sky went from dust-color to gray and then cool black sparked with stars, and she was still wide awake. She watched the dark highway and entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes: Dwayne Ray, Mattie, Esperanza, Lou Ann and all the rest.

And me. I was the main ingredient.

About the Author

B
ARBARA
K
INGSOLVER
grew up in eastern Kentucky. She is the author of eight books, including three other novels (
Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven
, and most recently,
The Poisonwood Bible
), a collection of stories (
Homeland
), and a book of essays (
High Tide in Tucson
). Since writing
The Bean Tress
, she has had two children, whom she raises with her husband, Steven Hopp. They live near the mountains outside of Tucson, Arizona.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Extraordinary Praise
for
Barbara Kingsolver’s
The Bean Trees

“
THE BEAN TREES
IS THE WORK OF A VISIONARY.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“A LIVELY NOVEL…. AN EASY BOOK TO ENJOY.”

—
The New Yorker

“LOVELY, FUNNY, TOUCHING AND HUMANE.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“A SPIRITED, WARM BOOK, WRY AND AT THE SAME TIME REFRESHINGLY GUILELESS.”

—Ella Leffland

High Tide in Tucson

“A DELIGHTFUL, CHALLENGING, AND WONDERFULLY INFORMATIVE BOOK.”

—
San Francisco Chronicle

“Barbara Kingsolver’s essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend…. [SHE] SPEAKS IN A LANGUAGE RICH WITH MUSIC AND REPLETE WITH GOOD SENSE.”

—
New York Times Book Review

“THE ACCLAIMED NOVELIST’S EXTRAORDINARY POWERS OF OBSERVATION AND UNDERSTANDING OF CHARACTER SERVE HER BEAUTIFULLY IN THIS COLLECTION OF ESSAYS.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

“MS. KINGSOLVER POSSESSES THE RARE ABILITY TO SEE THE NATURAL WORLD WITH THE KEENNESS OF BOTH THE POET AND THE NATURALIST.”

—
Washington Times

Animal Dreams

“KINGSOLVER IS A WRITER OF RARE AMBITION AND UNEQUIVOCAL TALENT….
Animal Dreams
is a complex, passionate, bravely challenging book.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“KINGSOLVER PROBES THE HUMAN HEART WITH UNCOMMON WISDOM.
Animal Dreams
is a gracefully written, large-spirited novel. Anchored on the earth, it dares to soar into the ethereal.”

—
New York Newsday

“ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST WORKS OF FICTION.”

—
Detroit News and Free Press

“
ANIMAL DREAMS
IS A NOVEL THAT FEELS CLOSER TO THE TRUTH ABOUT MODERN LIVES THAN ANYTHING I’VE READ IN A LONG TIME…. An astonishing book that ought to put Barbara Kingsolver in the first ranks of fiction writers.”

—Louise Bernikow,
Cosmopolitan

“Rich, complex, witty…. This is a sweet book, full of bitter pain; a beautiful weaving of the light and the dark. THIS ONE WILL BE WITH US FOR A LONG TIME.”

—Ursula K. Le Guin,
Washington Post Book World

Pigs in Heaven

“A NOVEL FULL OF MIRACLES.”

—
Newsweek

“FULL OF WIT, COMPASSION, AND INTELLIGENCE.”

—
People

“THERE IS NO ONE QUITE LIKE BARBARA KINGSOLVER IN CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. Her dialogue sparkles with sassy wit and the earthy poetry of ordinary folks’ talk; her descriptions have a magic lyricism rooted in daily life but also on familiar terms with the eternal.”

—
Washington Post Book World

“Possessed of an extravagantly gifted narrative voice, Kingsolver blends a fierce and abiding moral vision with benevolent, concise humor. HER MEDICINE IS MEANT FOR THE HEAD, THE HEART, AND THE SOUL.”

—
New York Times Book Review

Homeland and Other Stories

“EXTRAORDINARILY FINE, Barbara Kingsolver has a Chekhovian tenderness toward her characters…. The title story is PURE POETRY.”

—Russell Banks,
New York Times Book Review

“KINGSOLVER’S HUMANITY SOUNDS THE CLEAREST NOTE…telling us about characters in the middle of their days, who live as we really do, from one small incident of awareness to the next.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“READ
HOMELAND AND OTHER STORIES
AND YOU WILL FEEL GLAD TO BE ALIVE. You are delighted by a gifted storyteller. You are strengthened by the toughness and tenderness she discerns in humanity’s daily rounds.”

—
New York Newsday

Books by
Barbara Kingsolver

FICTION

Prodigal Summer

The Poisonwood Bible

Pigs in Heaven

Animal Dreams

Homeland and Other Stories

The Bean Trees

NONFICTION

Small Wonder: Essays

High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never

Holding the Line: Women in
the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983

POETRY

Another America

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THE BEAN TREES
. Copyright © 1998 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © APRIL 2007 ISBN: 9780061809699

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