Date: 24 November 2024
Location: Peggy & Gary
A nice turnout of Bookers made the journey over the mountain and into the woods to Gary and Peggy’s for our discussion of Barbara Kingsolver’s first work of fiction, The Bean Trees.
Nearly all the Bookers (9+) read the novel and most said they enjoyed it.
This is the fifth of Kingsolver’s novels that the Bookers have read – a number exceeded only by Erik Larson’s six books. That’s interesting since she is not the favorite author of some of our members, but nonetheless she keeps creating works that we all agree to read and generally enjoy.
This is the story of a young girl who leaves her Kentucky home in a piece-of-junk car, heading west in search of a better life. On the journey she adopts a new name, Taylor, and is basically forced to ‘rescue’ a three year old, sexually abused, Indian girl named Turtle.
She eventually makes it to Tucson, where she meets up with other women who befriend her and give her a job. The story then centers around her relationships with these women and with a couple of illegal immigrants being assisted by her employer. Most importantly it focuses on her efforts to become Turtle’s loving, capable, and legal mother.
One of our long-standing questions asked about almost every book is “How did the author treat women?”. For this novel the question should be “How did the author treat men?” and the answer is ‘Not very well’. All of the men except one were real jerks.
After our discussions of the book, we shared another wonderful meal – compliments of our hostess, Peggy.
— Bob