Book Review: Prodigal Summer

I picked up Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver at a thrift store. I read The Poisonwood Bible several years ago and remember liking it. I thought I'd give this a try. It was a great read. The book follows three sets of characters, alternating chapters between the stories. There's a woman living alone in the mountains, maintaining forest service trails and tracking wildlife. Then there are a pair of elderly feuding neighbors and a young widow living on her husband's family's land. Throughout the book, in each story, Kingsolver weaves this amazing knowledge of the interdependence of species: predators and prey, birds, plants, trees, insects. This was a work of fiction, and yet I feel that I learned.

As the stories progress, they touch briefly on each other. In the end, I feel it was a story about a place more than about characters. This book was unlike anything I've read before, and I loved it. Good job, thrift store.