Greer Family

Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.

Artisan of the modern folk tale, Barbara Kingsolver tells the provocative and slightly zany story of Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee daughter, Turtle, who become instant celebrities following a dramatic rescue of a retarded man. Unfortunately, the fame brings the pair to the attention of a Cherokee attorney who insists that Turtle's Oklahoma state-sanctioned adoption, without tribal consent, is illegal.

Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver's bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts. Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption-their new life together begins to crumble. Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart.

When a six-year-old child named Turtle is the sole witness to a freak accident, she and her adoptive mother, Taylor, appear on television. After seeing them, Annawake Fourkiller, an attorney for Oklahoma's Cherokee Nation, challenges Taylor's claim to Turtle, sending her fleeing across country on a wild odyssey that winds up in Heaven, Oklahoma, where pigs light the way to love.