By some magic I recently decided to reread Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. Swept down into the moist, green of an Appalachian holler, I experienced the author’s luscious language of procreation, love and desire. Only a biologist with the writing skills of Kingsolver can blend fiction with science and get away with it. Readers barely notice they are being instructed gently through storytelling to consider what may be lost under our feet through our inattention and by our misconception of where we humans fit into the larger scheme of things.
The third sentence of Prodigal Summer is the whole of the story:
Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, every choice a world made new for the chosen.
Nature is not simply wallpaper in our lives. Kingsolver weaves a story of interrelationships reflective of the true reality of all living things: we are utterly dependent on each other.
Susan Feathers 