Prodigal Summer

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Why do you think this book is entitled Prodigal Summer? In what ways do all of the characters display "prodigal" characteristics? Who, or what, welcomes them home from their journeys?

But. . . even though the protagonists in Prodigal Summer are also unrelatable to me, (lady scientists who think hair brushes are tools for collecting strands of DNA). . . this is the book that FINALLY worked for me. After graduating from high school, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. Eventually, however, she changed her major to biology when she realized that "classical pianists compete for six job openings a year, and the rest of [them:] get to play 'Blue Moon' in a hotel lobby." She was involved in activism on her campus, and took part in protests against the Vietnam war. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1977, and moved to France for a year before settling in Tucson, Arizona, where she would live for much of the next two decades. In 1980 she enrolled in graduate school at the University of Arizona, where she earned a Master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. Her descriptions of the natural world are lovely. The relationships are complex and sexy and intriguing. My favorite story line is the romance between Deanna and Eddie. It reminds me of the romance in "The River Why", another book I will write about here on goodreads (someday). I was far more interested in Lusa's story than the other two - although my interest in Deanna's was high at the start, then faded & Garnett's story was (finally) interesting at the finish. I'm a bit of a tree hugging, muesli munching, bone carving wearing greenie myself,* but found this book got more than a little "preachy" as it went on. For example;

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From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, 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. 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 of a future neither of them expected. These themes are very interesting but perhaps overplayed and the divide between the better educated and informed women and the simpler farmers is not sufficiently nuanced but rather one sided in presentation. a collision of sperm and egg. Lusa comes up with a novel solution to the Darwinist's famous problem of explaining altruism, and Deanna realizes she may not be the evolutionary ''dead weight''

The second story/chapter is "Moth Love". Lusa Widener married a farmer, Cole, the only brother of five sisters. Lusa is Polish/Arabian and finds herself the owner of a tobacco farm at the foot of the mountains. She is not a farmer herself, but a botanist and a "bug lady" and struggles with relating to anyone in her new family. Her ideas about farming get her ridiculed. Prodigal Summerweaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in 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 confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as 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. 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 complexities of a world neither of them expected.Another pause. She watched his hands, but what pulled on her was the dark green glint of his eyes. He observed her acutely, seeming to evaluate her hill-inflected vowels for the secrets behind her “yep” and “nope.” His grin turned down on the corners instead of up, asking a curved parenthetical question above his right-angled chin. She could not remember a more compelling combination of features on any man she’d ever seen.