Book 10 (2011) Pigs in Heaven

Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver is the sequel to The Bean Trees and adds more deminsion to the story of Turtle and Taylor.

Turtle and Taylor are on vacation at Hoover Dam and rescue a trapped man, which propels them onto an episode of Oprah. This brief stint of fame was enough for someone to figure out that Turtle was really a missing Cherokee Indiana baby.

When a representative of the Cherokee Nation arrives at Taylor and Jax (her live in zen boyfriend) house to see and to say the Nation could win legal custody of Turtle, Taylor takes her and flees. She lives on the lam, very unsuccessfully.

Meanwhile, Taylor's mama, Alice, leaves her husband and tries to help Taylor. Finally Alice goes to see a long lost cousin who, ironically, lives on the Nation. There Alice meets Cash, and then the story gets even more far-fetched.

I certainly do enjoy Kingsolver's writing style and I like the voice she gives to Taylor but in this book Taylor is, believe it or not, mainly a peripheral character. I didn't like Anna Fourkiller, the Cherokee Nation representative. I was upset with the idea that the tribe could just up and take Turtle from Taylor (I've no idea how much truth there is to ti). I think my personal biases interfered because I work with kids like this all the time. It was an interesting enough story but I think The Beans Trees was much better. (352 pgs)

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