Everywhere you looked, something was fighting for time, for light, the kiss of pollen, a connection of sperm and egg and another chance." Sex, the driving force that throws opposites suddenly and intimately together, provides a metaphor for man's dysfunctional relationship with nature that unifies the three stories and their characters. In the opening pages she writes: "Here and now, spring heaved in its randy moment. Nature's call is audible throughout Kingsolver's world. When Eddie Bondo, a man 19 years Deanna's junior, arrives to hunt the coyotes, the two begin a passionate affair that upends her predictable existence.
And in "Predators," a reclusive wildlife specialist named Deanna Wolfe is enraptured with a den of coyotes, animals reviled on the wooded mountain where she lives.
Garnett Walker, a cranky conservative, verbally spars with his next-door neighbor, Nannie Rawley, an earthy-crunchy, Unitarian-church-going, Rachel Carson-loving orchard keeper. "Old Chestnuts" is the funniest of the stories and the novel's ideological engine. As Lusa slowly earns the Wideners' respect, one sister comments on the clubbiness of families: "That's what Joel said for years after we got married: 'Going to a Widener get-together is like a gol-dang trip to China.' Why is that? We don't seem like anything special to me." When Lusa is suddenly widowed, she defies expectations by ignoring the snide remarks of her five sisters-in-law and working the family farm. "Prodigal Summer" consists of three separate stories, each set in southern Appalachia and told in alternating chapters under the titles "Predators," "Moth Love" and "Old Chestnuts." In "Moth Love," Lusa Maluf Landowski marries the youngest and favorite son of the cliquish Widener clan.
Her lusty birds, bees and baby boomers possess a profound innocence, and their urges animate a wide-ranging discussion of everything from organic farming to reengaging with life. (Think John Updike or Nicholson Baker.) What's striking about "Prodigal Summer" is that Barbara Kingsolver's preoccupation with coupling never feels gratuitous or pandering. It's not unusual for an established writer to pen a mid-career novel all about sex.
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