Product Description

A phenomenal bestseller and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for fiction, Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16853 in Books
• Published on: 1994-04-27
• Released on: 1994-03-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee daughter Turtle, first met in The Bean Trees , will captivate readers anew in Kingsolver's assured and eloquent sequel, which mixes wit, wisdom and the expert skills of a born raconteur into a powerfully affecting narrative. Now six years old and still bearing psychological marks of the abuse that occured before she was rescued by Taylor, Turtle is discovered by formidable Indian lawyer Annawake Fourkiller, who insists that the child be returned to the Cherokee Nation. Taylor reacts by fleeing her Tucson home with Turtle to begin a precarious existence on the road; skirting the edge of poverty and despair, she eventually realizes that Turtle has become emotionally unmoored. In taking a fresh look at the Solomonic dilemma of choosing between two equally valid claims on a child's life, Kingsolver achieves the admirable feat of making the reader understand and sympathize with both sides of the controversy, as she contrasts Taylor's inalterable mother's love with Annawake's determination to save Turtle from the stigmatization she can expect from white society. The chronicle acquires depth and humor when Kingsolver integrates the story of Taylor's mother Alice, a woman who believes that the Greers are "doomed to be a family with no men in it" (that she is proven wrong adds a delicious element of romance to the story). Alice's resolve to help her daughter takes her into the heart of the Cherokee Nation and results in an astonishing but credible meshing of lives. In the end, both justice and compassion are served. Kingsolver's intelligent consideration of issues of family and culture--both in her evocation of Native American society and in her depiction of the plight of a single mother--brims with insight and empathy. Every page of this beautifully controlled narrative offers prose shimmering with imagery and honed to simple lyric intensity. In short, the delights of superior fiction can be experienced here. 100,000 first printing; $125,000 ad/promo; BOMC alternate; author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-When a young Cherokee tribal lawyer comes to the door to claim Taylor's illegally adopted Indian daughter, the white woman must face the fact that her stable life is about to be torn apart. The story follows her and six-year-old Turtle across the West as they flee from the threat of separation and exist on minimum-wage earnings. Meanwhile, Taylor's mother, Alice, leaves her second husband and goes to stay with her cousin in Heaven, Oklahoma. There she meets Cash, a full-blooded Cherokee, who has been living outside the reservation, but yearns to return to his roots. The richness of Indian tribal life is seen through the eyes of Cash, Alice, and Annawake Fourkiller, the lawyer. There are some wonderful scenes revealing Cherokee customs and lifestyles. The stories of the different characters are woven together with humor and sensitivity. When Taylor and Turtle come to the reservation to face their future, readers will feel the adoptive mother's helplessness as she admits that she, too, might have let the child down. The characters are ordinary, yet noble and memorable, and the ending is just and gratifying. The issue of Indian children being adopted outside the tribe is addressed with respect from all sides.
Penny Stevens, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
It takes an insightful writer like Kingsolver ( Animal Dreams , LJ 8/1/90) to tackle the complicated, emotional issue of dysfunctional families, but she does it well (again), making this development of characters first introduced in The Bean Trees ( LJ 2/1/88) as enjoyable to read as its predecessor--and better. Taylor Greer and her kindergarten-aged adopted daughter, Turtle, unwittingly place themselves at the center of a controversy involving Turtle's Native American heritage. Their love for each other--an unspoken, unquestioning bond--helps them cope with family, friends, and lovers as they try to tie the loose ends of their lives into a strong, tidy knot. Maybe this novel will help readers understand the meaning of life or simply provide them with some good entertainment. But as Kingsolver brilliantly reveals from the first pages of this novel, the answers to our questions aren't delivered easily but must come from the heart. Recommended for all general collections. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/93.
- Marlene McCormack-Lee, Reedsport Branch Lib., Ore.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Pigs in Heaven: Individualism VS Collectivism
In Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver breaks the norms of classical or even contemporary novels by creating a complex story with no real hero or true villain. The talk can be over main characters but not one single, major persona that is in the very limelight. The extensive use of symbolism in this novel turns human relationships into philosophical issues, issues that convert the physical, tangible into abstraction, issues that awake inquisitiveness and the critical sort of mind out of the active reader, compelling the latter to think of those relationships as culturally pertinent questions that are in urgent need of culturally satisfactory answers. Characters are ridden with symbolism. But these symbolic representations, served in a plate of a relatively tangled plot, aesthetically deprive characters of being classified in a hierarchy of significance. They are almost in the same taxonomic level. For example, Barbie, as a person and a member of a culture, is as significant as Alice Greer; Annawake Fourkiller is as important as Taylor Greer. Actually, what gives this novel a position as a work of art is the fact that each character has its own place, its features, its individuality, and its life, and the writer's capability of providing a character with actual life guarantees the reader's identification with and immersion in the character. It is this deep involvement that transports the reader out of the face-to-face, physical, and tangible, to the abstract and unseen: to the cultural. The cultural in Pigs in Heaven is not the background, yet the foreground; it is the true protagonist and the source of the perceived dichotomy and the serious conflict between individualism and collectivity.
(............)
By the end of the novel, Barbara Kingsolver aims at providing the most appropriate alternative to American, individualistic, mainstream culture. In a witty way, she could literally marry two representatives of two different cultures, and through this she metaphorically marries the cultures in question, tacitly asserting that the actual existence of American culture as a hybrid culture in a low-conflict society where individualism and collectivism are in tune can never be attained through false simulacra and distorted images produced by T.V as passive receivers, such as Harland, falsely believe ; rather, this is attainable if cultural groups have the will to be involved in close intercultural interactions that are grounded in respect and tolerance. Also, via a riveting, culture-based story, Barbara Kingsolver stresses the significance of approaching cultural issues from a dialectical point of view. Quoting J. N. Martin and T. K. Nakayama, "the best solution is not always one or the other but may lie somewhere in between" (408).
(For comments you can reach me at: bensaidmohsine@gmail.com)

She's Amazing.
I love all of Barbara Kingsolver's books, but this book and The Bean Trees are her best!

One of the best books I've ever read
Taylor Greer never thought she'd be a mother. But, thanks to a bizarre chain of events in "The Bean Trees," she found herself raising a Cherokee child named Turtle. Now six years old, the little girl who was initially so traumatized by previous abuse that she didn't speak has made herself at home with Taylor and her boyfriend Jackson. To Turtle, they are the only parents she has ever known.

But an unexpected moment of recognition attracts the attention of an Oklahoma lawyer, Annawake Fourkiller, to Turtle. Knowing it's illegal for a Cherokee child to be adopted outside her tribe, Annawake sets out to find Taylor and Turtle, and begin the process of returning her to what she feels is her rightful place in the world. But both mother and daughter have other ideas, and with Taylor's mother Alice, they embark on a road trip intending to begin a life elsewhere.

Annawake, however, is young and determined to do what she believes is right...especially after what happened to her twin brother when they were children. In Gabe's name, Annawake swears she will "fix" another child's life.

Although starting over is a struggle -- living on Taylor's minimum wage earnings and struggling to find adequate childcare -- the two have the potential to be successful. Yet Taylor quickly realizes there's a lot more to a good life than getting by materially; without Jackson, her home and friends, Turtle is quickly reverting to her old emotional state.

Taylor finally concedes that she and Turtle can't run away from their problems forever. She only prays that Annawake and the others who have become involved in the case will see that skin color and genetics aren't the only important factors in creating a loving mother and daughter.