The Bean Trees

Marietta Greer didn't know many things, but what she did know was that she didn't want to end up like every other girl in Pittman Country, bedded and wedded before she was smart enough to know any different. Escaping clear across the country, changing her name, and of all things, picking up an abandoned Indian girl, Marietta, now Taylor was determined to make a life for herself. Along the way she encounters friends she didn't know she wanted, and a daughter who was not her flesh and blood, but would become her heart and soul. In leaving she finds the home she thought she left behind and the life she didn't know was hers to embrace.
Barbara Kingsolver has the magical gift of making mere characters more than just text on a page. More than show more just black and white font. The people in her stories and the struggles of life they encounter have the penchant for leaping out of the book and burrowing inside the heart. The Bean Trees was no exception. This is not one to be rushed through, but rather savoured and enjoyed as a contemplative reflection. A beautiful story with a heart warming message about hope, belonging, friendships, and that which binds us together - the search for a place we can call home and the people we can learn to call family. Highly recommended. show less

My reading history of Barbara Kingsolver's works is backwards. Most people start with her award-winning fiction, such as The Poisonwood Bible or The Lacuna, while others have been following her career since the beginning with The Bean Trees or The Prodigal Summer. Nope, not me. I first discovered Kingsolver through her non-fiction essay collections, High Tide in Tucson and Small Wonder, and fell not only in love with her writing - but also her philosophy on the world and nature. Reading her non-fictional essays first gave me a unique perspective as I began to read her novels. While her essays provided data and hard facts on issues such as colonialism, environmental concerns, war and immigration, her fiction told the stories of how these show more devastating factors affect people. And that's no different with Kingsolver's first book, The Bean Trees.

In The Bean Trees, we meet a precocious young girl named Taylor, who decides to leave her hillbilly Kentucky town and head west in a beat-up VW bug. As she travels through Oklahoma, she stops at a local hole in the wall, where a Native American woman approaches her with a small child. The woman insists that Taylor take the girl, despite Taylor's protest, and before realizing it, Taylor is entrusted with a young girl who seems catatonic. Not knowing what to do, Taylor continues her journey west, literally driving until the wheels fall off her car, ending up in Tucson, Arizona.

There, Taylor and the girl, who she nicknames Turtle, begin a life together. Along the way, we meet colorful, real-to-life characters who help Taylor and her quest to lay down some roots. Namely, we meet Esteban and Esperanza, illegal immigrants from Guatamala, who tell their story of horror and heartbreak. Through these characters, Kingsolver shows the human side of immigration - the "why" people take a chance on coming to America and risk deportation.

Kingsolver published The Bean Trees in 1988, and even at the start of her career, she was a magnificent storyteller. Certainly, like all writers, her craft has evolved, but she's never lost sight of her values and desire to make a change. I liked the punchy, humorous style of this book, and I look forward to reading Pigs In Heaven, the next book about Turtle's life, very soon. show less

I have just finished listening to The Bean Trees written by Barbara Kingsolver and read by C. J. Critt and I now have a bookish crush on Ms. Kingsolver. Why oh why, I ask myself have I avoided this author over the years? Someone in the past made disparaging remarks and I unfortunately believed them. Now I am anxious to read more by this author. The Bean Trees is about feisty Marietta Greer, who escapes the backwaters of Kentucky to find herself a new life. When her car breaks down in Taylorville, Illinois, she chooses to rename herself Taylor. When she reaches Oklahoma and has problems with her ‘55 Volkswagen bug, she ends up having a baby placed in her arms by a sad Cherokee woman. Taylor calls the baby Turtle as she clings so show more tightly to her new mother.

I loved this story of how Taylor and Turtle find a new place in Arizona for themselves and surround themselves with good friends that become like family. The author uses humor and whimsy in generous amounts but also doesn’t shy away from dark truths and real life. As Taylor embraces the responsibility of motherhood and comes to love the state of Arizona, the reader is treated to a wonderful story of affirmation, risk-taking, commitment and love.

Originally published in 1988, this book, with it’s references to political and human rights issues surrounding illegal immigrants is very relevant to the border situation today. The Bean Trees is a touching, funny and humane story that was raised to excellence by the fantastic narration of C. J. Critt. show less

In [The Bean Trees] young Marietta Greer tells the story of her journeys…from her Kentucky birthplace to the American west, from near-poverty (economic, social, and cultural) and non-existent opportunity, from her given name, even from her mother.

When I drove over the Pittman line I made two promises to myself…The first was that I would get myself a new name. I wasn't crazy about anything I had been called up to that point in my life, and this seemed like the time to make a clean break. I didn't have any special name in mind, but just wanted a change…I decided to let the gas tank decide. Wherever it ran out, I'd look for a sign.

Coasting into Taylorville, Illinois, she becomes Taylor Greer.

Driving on in her marginally functional show more 1955 VW, Taylor stops at an Oklahoma roadside bar, in hopes of cadging a burger, and is given a small, silent child, closely wrapped in a blanket that obscures its sex and its age, a bundle carefully set in the passenger seat. A woman—the child's mother?—murmurs furtively about desperate circumstances and quickly moves away. She climbs into a pickup parked across the lot and it pulls away. Just that fast, Taylor is a mother.

Within a few hours, Taylor learns the child is a girl, that she's pathologically withdrawn, undernourished, a victim of sexual abuse. She continues to drive west, her mind sorting and resorting questions and options. On the outskirts of Tucson, the VW's tires give out. They've stayed inflated long enough to get the car onto the lot of Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. Taylor, of course, has no money by this time, so getting tires, even well-used tires, are out of the question. She's arrived, it seems, at the end of her journey.

But we're only on page 41, and Taylor has a whole lot of journeying still to do. As she progresses, she's befriended by Mattie, the woman who runs the used tire business and who moonlights with an underground railroad marshalling Guatemalan illegals through Arizona and on into the secret American heartlands. Mattie gives her employment. Taylor also hooks up with Lou Ann, a fellow Kentuckian married to a rodeo rider of Mexican heritage. Lou Ann has an infant son, Dwayne Ray, but is losing her husband, who is intent on divorcing her.

Taylor's named her "daughter" Turtle because, like a snapping turtle, she grasps her hand or coat-hem with a vise-like grip. Inevitably, Taylor is confronted by the need to somehow legalize her adoption of Turtle.

[The Bean Trees] was Kingsolver's first novel, and in it she demonstrated her ear for dialog, her sensitivity to the nuances of interpersonal relationships, her appreciation of all the facets and feelings surrounding motherhood, whether biological or adoptional. The story builds, enticing you to follow along Taylor's road. You'll be glad if you do. show less

Marietta grows up in rural Kentucky, and her prospects are dim; half the girls in high school drop out pregnant, and a man with a stable job is a prize catch. When her science teacher offers to recommend a student for a job at the county hospital, she steps up and it becomes her route out. Several years later, money saved, she buys a car and heads west with a plan: (1) She’ll change her name where the car runs out of gas; this happens in Taylorville and she becomes Taylor. (2) She’ll stop where the car breaks down; this happens at the edge of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Taylor is 1/8 Cherokee, and has had fantasies of claiming head rights, but the reality is too bleak to be the rest of her life. Instead of staying, she gets the show more car repaired. As she is about to leave, a Cherokee woman places a swaddled child in the car, conveys that the mother is dead and the child is undocumented, and exits the scene. It’s night, and the landscape is empty. When Taylor reaches a motel, she unwraps the blanket, and sees a girl with evidence of molestation. By the time Taylor reaches Tucson, she is completely attached and has nicknamed the child Turtle.

In Tucson, Taylor meets Mattie through a flat tire, and Lou Ann through a newspaper ad. Mattie is the widowed proprietor of Jesus Is Lord Used Tires, and needs an employee; she is also committed to a shelter above the garage for Guatemalan refugees, notably Estevan and Esperanza. Lou Ann is the recently separated mother of an infant son, and needs a housemate; she is another transplant from Kentucky and the bond is immediate: “You talk just like me.” Mutual support abounds, and it’s a strength of the novel, perhaps idealized but with an aura of authenticity.

Taylor presents Turtle as her foster child. A doctor takes x-rays and discovers bone fractures. Turtle is older than assumed, nearly 3, small and mute with a diagnosed “failure to thrive”. Gradually, in the nurturing group of women, Turtle begins to thrive; she fixates on Mattie’s garden, where seeds put in the ground grow into colorful shapes, and utters a word: “bean”, which rapidly proliferates into a botanical dictionary. Then an incident brings in a social worker, questions are raised, and Taylor may lose Turtle if the adoption is not made official.

This was Barbara Kingsolver’s debut novel, and its kinship with later novels is apparent: rural Kentucky meets the big wide world, with ecological glimmerings. As with Flight Behavior and Prodigal Summer, I cared about the people. So I temporarily set aside my queasiness about the plot device of a child conveniently acquired without strings, orphaned, voluntarily transferred, unambiguously damaged in the past and healing in the present, rationalized by an ancestral connection. And yet... in real life, there’d be strings aplenty. And compounding my queasiness, the resolution involves a deception that could be endangering but is portrayed as cathartic. Still, I’ll probably read the sequel, because, well, I do care about the people, and I gather it is in part a response to criticism or further consideration. show less

Kingsolver's later works (The Poisonwood Bible) are wonderful, but her early stuff really sings. Most books can't make me laugh and cry, but this one did. I really enjoyed the characters, all of whom were real, engaging, and complex. Yes, it's short, but it still feels complete.

Highly recommended.

Marietta Greer needs a change. Young, unhappy, restless in her small eastern Kentucky town. She buys a beat-up VW bug, kisses her Mom and hit’s the road. She heads west. She changes her name to Taylor after seeing Taylorville on a highway road sign and lets those bald tires sing.
In Oklahoma, she finds a three year old American Indian girl in her backseat; abandoned, with no hope of finding the family. Taylor names her Turtle and keeps on trucking.
She ends up on the outskirts of Tucson, at an auto-repair shop named Jesus is Lord Used Tires. Her life has officially changed.
This is a perfect first novel, filled with wry humor and keen insight. The prose is tight and the characters are fully-realized.

"I'm just a plain hillbilly from East show more Jesus Nowhere with this adopted child that everybody keeps on telling me is dumb as a box of rocks. I've got nothing on you, girl."

“There must be transients in the bird world too, rumple-feathered outcasts that naturally seek out each other’s company in inferior and dying trees.” show less