Barbara Kingsolver

Fiction 1993/ 343 pages

After finishing The Bean Trees, I immediately read the sequel, Pigs in Heaven. I didn't like it nearly as much.  It picks up three years later, with the topic of how to arrange Turtle's legal adoption. given the morals and norms of the Cherokee nation.  A lot of the book takes place with Alice, Turtle's grandmother, on Cherokee land.

I missed Lou Ann and preferred to read about the child characters versus adults.

However, it is still Barbara Kingsolver, and she is an astounding writer.  I particularly enjoyed characters like Cash who is fascinated with weed birds ... what he calls pigeons ... and wants them killed off; and Lucky Buster, who has mental retardation and can't really tell home from the outside world and disappears often.  Kingsolver presented fascinating insight into the Cherokee tribe.

It is worth reading this sequel, I was just a bit unenthused.

July 2026