The Bean Trees

I wasn't expecting this book to touch me the way it did. I also wasn't expecting it to have been the author's first work. I had read some of her other books, but I didn't notice this was her first until after I finished it. Holy cow, was I even more impressed with it once that knowledge came to me. There are so many themes and so much symbolism within these pages, but it isn't the type that smacks you around the head with "Here's a theme!" or "Here comes some symbolism!" I simply read the book from beginning to end and enjoyed every moment of it.

The Bean Trees is a story about family and finding that family in some unusual places. They say you don't get to pick your family, but in this case you do and when told this way, it is a thing show more of beauty to watch the relationships form and grow. I recommend this book for anyone wanting an emotional, well developed plot that will touch the heart and soul. Put aside your worries about plot devices and story set ups and just read from beginning to end because of the joy of it. 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

"Mi'ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can."

Turtle remains one of my favorite literary characters of all time, and the friendships forged by Taylor, Turtle's accidental ma, with Mattie, Lou Ann, Estevan, and Esperanza, are so sweet and timeless. Exploring such themes as belonging and loyalty and sacrifice and the courage to keep going, the novel follows Taylor from her Kentucky hometown to Tucson. Driving west in a ramshackle VW, she doesn't know what she seeks but along the way she acquires Turtle, a silent and adorable toddler. Turtle needs Taylor but, of course, Taylor needs Turtle, too. As their bond grows, so does Taylor's understanding of the brutality of the world and the beauty show more of connection.

I'm not sure I would have given this five stars if this had been my first time reading the novel, but I remembered it as a five-star read from the late 1980s and I'm sticking with that rating due to the novel's ability to so firmly ensconce itself in my reading memory. I thoroughly enjoyed it and plan to seek out a copy of the sequel, Pigs in Heaven, for a reread very soon. show less

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

I fell in love with plucky, courageous Taylor Greer from page one as she abandons her Kentucky home to move west to Tucson, Arizona desperate to evade a certain fate of wedlock-free baby-raising. This is the fastest reading, essentially plotless book you'll ever meet, filled with excellent characters including Taylor herself, her worrywart roommate Lou Ann, no-nonsense Mattie down at Jesus is Lord Used tires, a pair of Nicaraguan refugees, baby Turtle, who is obsessed with vegetables. This pack of irrepressible characters leaps off the page. Kingsolver's early writing is lucid, full of wisdom and sympathy for her characters and the unexpected places life takes them.