book love: prodigal summer

I am immersed in Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer for the sixth year in a row. It's one of my favorite traditions that I look forward to every year during spring's first bloom. The book speaks of the complexities of human interaction, ecological hierarchies, and organic farming, of love and loss, passion and grief, of "extravagant procreation" and rural simplicity.

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Kingsolver's flowing poetry cascades in and out of three delicately interconnected storylines. In Predators, an aging wildlife biologist becomes distracted with a torrid affair while studying the recovery of an ecosystem by a pioneering coyote family. In Moth Love, a widowed farmer's wife comes to terms with the inheritance of a dilapidated, tobacco-destined farm and a family consumed with misunderstandings. And in Old Chestnuts, a proud retired teacher attempts to single-handedly revive the extinct American chestnut while battling his old-fashioned views with an unruly petite neighbor and her organic philosophies.

I've never written about a book before and its hard to make something you love so much not sound cheesy or contrived. You want others to experience it too, to take in the amazing ebb and flow of the novel that moves you to multi-year reflection. But when I read what I just wrote above, I realize my interpretation somehow turned Kingsolver's masterpiece into cheap romance novel dust jacket! Hence, the reason why my day job is not being a writer and I will keep my musings on this topic short.

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Bottom line: I love this book not only for the pure enjoyment of it, but for its beautiful character development and teachings of ecological principles, for righting the wrongs made by ignorance and miscommunication, and celebrating the subtle complexities of life, be it human, coyote, luna moth, American chestnut, or any other extraordinary species, both here and gone.