Prodigal Summer

Within a broader tapestry of people residing in the wooded mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia, Prodigal Summer interweaves three tales of human love.

Wildlife scientist Deanna Wolfe, a solitary individual, observes a den of freshly migrating coyotes from her outpost in a remote mountain home. A young hunter unexpectedly enters her most intimate areas, confusing her confident, lonesome lifestyle. Lusa Maluf Landowski, a scholarly city girl who became a farmer's wife, finds herself suddenly marooned in a new area on a farm many kilometers down the mountain. She must proclaim or lose her devotion to the land that has become her own. A few miles farther on the road, two elderly neighbors engaged in bitter rivalry manage their own farms and argue about God, pesticides, and the potential for a future none of them anticipated.

These people discover their relationships to each other and to the plants and animals they coexist with throughout the course of one steamy summer. Prodigal Summer has the narrative, dramatic, and intellectual balance that defines Barbara Kingsolver's best writing.