What Book Is Your State, Arizona?
By Kristen on Feb 28, 2008 in 50 States 50 Books, Future Classics...?
It’s Thursday and the Columbia Spectator’s continuing series on “a list of 50 books that we think capture the essence of each state, all while telling a great story along the way” has tackled Arizona this week!
Photo by Mellard
We first learned that To Kill A Mockingbird best represents Alabama. Then we travelled to Michigan and considered whether Eugenides’s Middlesex wouldn’t have been a better choice than The Virgin Suicides (in my opinion as a native Michigander). North Dakota’s pick was Peace Like A River by Leif Enger, and Alaska’s pick was a collection of short stories by Nancy Lord entitled The Man Who Swam With Beavers. Last week, Melanie Jones picked Heads by Harry by Lois-ann Yamanaka, the first selection I have yet to read.
This week I return to familiar ground with the mesmerizing Barbara Kingsolver. The Bean Trees was the first novel I read by her — and I quickly consumed many others. Although The Poisonwood Bible is her masterpiece (and stunning), I strongly recommend you read Prodigal Summer, if you haven’t yet. Ranks as one of my all-time favorites…
But, on to The Bean Trees, a lovely tale of redemption and love. Here are Melanie Jones’s words on why this novel best represents the glorious state of Arizona:
Barbara Kingsolver, of The Poisonwood Bible fame, wrote The Bean Trees about finding salvation in an ostensibly barren situation—appropriately, this low-key debut novel is set in Arizona. Taylor Greer leaves rural Kentucky to find adventure out west, and by the time she hits Tucson, she’s achieved it, having mysteriously “inherited” a Native American toddler named Turtle. Taylor becomes involved with a sanctuary for Central American refugees run by Mattie, owner of “Jesus Is Lord Used Tires,” and soon finds herself struggling to understand the conflicts she must face head-on, from immigration and divorce to her newfound daughter’s unknown past. Kingsolver, as she does in all her novels, balances heady topics with quick-witted dialogue and her ever-present wry humor.
Photo by Jeff Wignall
Taylor’s Arizona neighbors, from the elegant, soft-spoken Esteban to the lovably neurotic Lou Ann, are as richly drawn as the tough-as-nails heroine herself. As Kingsolver’s characters continually find beauty in the absence of plenty, the Arizona landscape seems designed especially for them. During the desert’s periodic dry spells, the world looks “parched … like it ached, somehow”—the only sound is a high screaming buzz of cicada mating calls. Yet, nestled among the cracked and dusty hills, are canyons with waterfalls, cottonwood trees, and flowers like the night-blooming cereus, which opens enormous buds only one night a year. Then there are the cacti—skinny saguaros whose red fruits “split open like mouths” at their crown, and the clustered ocotillos, each topped with a “flaming orange spike.”
Photo by MikeJonesPhoto
The Arizona desert is full of life, albeit strange forms of it, just as Taylor and Turtle’s world, while possessing hardships, can also lay claim to indescribable happiness. “There were bushes and trees and weeds here, exactly the same as anywhere else,” Taylor recalls, “except that the colors were different, and everything alive had thorns.”
Here’s to you, Arizona!! Such a glorious state… Wish I was there right now…
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