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An acclaimed bestseller that has come to be regarded as an American classic, The Bean Trees is the novel that launched Barbara Kingsolver's remarkable literary career. Kingsolver has gone on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Demon Copperhead, and is the recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters.
The Bean Trees is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a three-year-old Native American girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in seemingly empty places.
What are you reading this week? (7/31/2025)
...cause I needed to read a book because I wanted to, not because I had to and the Old West is my most favorite setting. Just finishing the audiobook of The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and have really enjoyed the story and the narrator. Then will go back to the audiobook of Candide by Voltaire. I have no idea what to think of what I...
-Lana_Maskus
What are you reading this week? (7/24/2025)
Thanks for the comment about Bean Trees narrator. I read the book when it first came out and of course that started my love affair with Barbara Kingsolver. Nowadays I do most of my reading through my ears, so the Bean Trees audiobook is going on my TBR list. :blush: :green_heart:
-Sunny
"This funny, inspiring book is a marvelous affirmation of risk-taking, commitment and everyday miracles...An overwhelming delight, as random and unexpected as real life." ―Publishers Weekly
"The work of a visionary... . It leaves you open-mouthed and smiling." ―Los Angeles Times
"As clear as air. It is the southern novel taken west, its colors as translucent and polished as one of those slices of rose agate from a desert shop." ―New York Times Book Review
This information about The Bean Trees was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Annie Griffiths
Barbara Kingsolver was born in 1955, and grew up in rural Kentucky. She earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times in her adult life she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides.
Her books, in order of publication, are: The Bean Trees (1988), Homeland (1989), Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike (1989), Animal Dreams (1990), Another America (1992), Pigs in Heaven (1993), High Tide in Tucson (1995), The Poisonwood Bible (1998), Prodigal Summer (2000), Small Wonder (2002)...
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"The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period."
—Ann Patchett
It is a fact of life that any discourse...will always please if it is five minutes shorter than people expect
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