... written by Barbara Kingsolver. Even though it is a depressing story line about climate change, the book is a delight, recommended reading for anyone who enjoys a good story, with well formed characters and dry wit. I thought I had read some of her work, picking up the book due to the name of the author, but could not recall what she had written. Over time, as it took me several weeks to get to the last page, I recalled she also wrote "The Bean Trees", read years ago, that was also excellent entertainment. Thinking I might go back and read that one again...
The story is set in the mountains of North Carolina, with the players being a family who live in a very rural, struggling, economically depressed community. The main character, a woman with two small children, feels confined, unappreciated, frustrated, disappointed with her life. She discovers a huge gathering of monarch butterflies in the mountains her husbands' family owns. The father-in-law has plans to sell the timber, have the mountain area logged for income to help with financial difficulties. But the butterflies change everything. An expert who has been studying the migration patterns for years comes, dragging a little trailer and begins to study, evaluate, count, attempt to understand why the butterflies are there on the mountainside when they should be traveling to their wintering grounds in the Mexico highlands.
Dellarobia begins to spend time with the research scientist and young grad students who have come along to help with the study. She is intrigued by what they do and how the information is used, evaluations will help science. The researcher, Ovid Byron, eventually hires her after he sets up a lab in a dairy barn on the property to more accurately evaluate the information they are gathering.
Kingsolver is a terrific writer. I enjoyed every single page of the book. It was a rare page that did not make me chuckle or break out in full fledged guffaws. Dellarobia was so well expressed I kept putting the book down because I did not want to finish, though I knew there were a finite number of pages, and it would soon end. There were so many thoughtful statements to ponder or well worded conversations to re-read and savor, I often stopped to write down quotes to remember. Here are a few:
"... she recognized the insantity of the plaln, and was ready to jump out of her hair."
"Did you ask him any questions?" she asked, knowing Hester wouldn't have, endowed as she was with the glory of know it all."
"My mother-in-law is not one for making allowances. If she were an underaker, she'd tell her clients to quit whining and walk to the cemetery."
"Dovey was not the fish-stick type but would eat gravel to get away from the duplex, where her landlord brother was tearing out tile for no apparent reason."
"He pulled back his chin in such skeptical dismay, he looked like a startled turtle."
"Her life was unfolding into something larger by the day, like one of those rectangular gas-station maps that open out to the size of a windshield."
"She'd asked him to tidy things up a bit, but men and barns were like a bucket of forks, tidy was no part of the equation."
This is just a teaser to get you to read it.
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