California - East of Eden

"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”  

There's no need to go into detail with how much of an international landmark the state of California is. Ranked as the fifth largest economy in the world, beating out the likes of the UK, France, and India, it's a destination that's known throughout the globe as one of the dominant economic and cultural hubs the United States.

A feature that seems to be underappreciated is how unique California's geography is compared to the rest of the United States. Almost the entire coast is lined by rugged mountain ranges and rolling hills that contrast with the gradually sloping coastal lines of most other states. For example, Cone Peak, one of the many located within California's Big Sur region, is only about 3.25 miles away from the coast as the crow flies but is over 5150 feet above sea level. It's these conditions that create the year round mild weather and temperature that California is known for, and this combined with the fertile valleys nestled between the coastal and central ranges of the state make for some of the nation's most productive agricultural hot spots.

One of these valleys would be the Salinas Valley. Bordered by the Gabilan Range to the east and the Santa Lucian Range to the west, it's referred to as "the Salad Bowl of the World" given the predominance of agricultural industry in the region. It would also become the setting for several novels by native author John Steinbeck, including Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men.

Where the Salinas Valley made its impact most on Steinbeck was its location. As mentioned above, the valley is bordered by the Gabilan and Santa Lucian ranges, both rugged landmarks that Steinbeck would describe as being vastly different. In the Gabilans, one could see mountains that were "light" and "full of sun and loveliness," while the Santa Lucians were "dark and brooding." The location of Salinas Valley thought of by Steinbeck as a neutral ground between good and evil, with its inhabitants stuck in a modern day Garden of Eden and between two forces that could alter their fates. It's for that reason that the Salinas Valley would be chosen as the setting of Steinbeck's most famous work and California's novel for this blog, East of Eden.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is an epic family saga about two generations of the Trask family. Both generations feature a set of brothers, whose lives and events would serve as a modern day allegory to the Bible story of Cain and Abel. There are of course multiple other characters, all with their own unique feature and plot lines. For the sake of containing the length of this blog post, only the key events involving the Trask family will be covered in much detail.

Before diving further into the characters of the book, it helps to understand or have a refresher of the events that were written about in Genesis.

Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, born outside of the Garden of Eden. Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a shepherd, both presented an offering to God. God would acknowledge Abel's offering but not Cain's, which would cause Cain to become jealous and angry over what he considered preferential treatment to Abel. Cain then brought Abel into a field, "rose against" him, and killed him. God, angry at what Cain had done, issued the following curse (from the King James version:)

"When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth."

Cain would then plead with God, saying that the burden would be too big to bear, that anyone who would find him would surely kill him due to this curse. God would place a mark on Cain to show the world that whoever would kill Cain would face God's vengeance sevenfold, giving Cain the protection he needed. Cain would then settle in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden.

The first generation of the Trask family, which the first part of the book focuses on, consists of brothers Adam and Charles and their Civil War veteran father Cyrus. The Trasks live on a farm in Connecticut, where Cyrus raises and disciplines his sons with a strict set of military exercises. Charles, the younger but stronger brother, aims to please his father in whatever way he can. He also has a violent streak; when Adam beats Charles in a game of horseshoes, the latter attacks him in a rage.

Tensions come to a peak when the brothers each give Cyrus a gift for his birthday. Charles gives Cyrus a pocket knife that he saved a considerable amount of money for, while Adam gives him a stray dog he found while wandering in the woods. Cyrus treats the knife with indifference, but is overjoyed with the dog. Charles later confronts Adam outside of the house, where he then attacks him once more. After knocking Adam to the ground, Charles goes so far as to retrieve an ax to kill his brother, but Adam is able to escape before Charles has a chance to carry out murder.

A series of events leads to Cyrus securing a job in the War Department in Washington and enlisting Adam into the army, while Charles stays behind to tend to the farm. He does the job well, but starts to live an aimless, joyless life. He writes frequently to Adam in hopes that he they can patch things up. He frequently prowls around the hotel in town, where a secret brothel is run out of the top floor. Eventually, Adam returns to the farm, and the two are able to start over.

Two other events cause the relationship between Adam and Charles to become strained, finally to the point of being severed permanently. The first is when they find out that their father has died and left them a large inheritance of $100,000. Charles is able to piece together that Cyrus had committed fraud against the War Department, which makes him see his inheritance as dirty money. Adam sees it as a gift to make up for their father's behavior and begins to fantasize about buying land in California, a place he had spent some time in after his stint the army. The second incident involves Adam taking care of and then marrying a woman named Cathy Ames, whose story is fleshed out parallel to the happenings of the Trask brothers. Charles, a disgrace and fallen man himself, is able to see past the facade that Cathy, who at this point is described by the narrator as being a monster from the day she was born, puts on around the naive and trusting Adam. When he tells Adam about Cathy's likely evil and sinister intentions, the two face yet another altercation. Adam and Cathy marry and then set out for California, never to see Charles again.

This first generation of Trask brothers parallel the story of Cain and Abel in a way that's almost on the nose, starting from the moment they give Cyrus gifts for his birthday. Charles, like Cain, gives Cyrus a tool that he toiled hard for while Adam, like Abel, gives an animal that he watched over. Adam, while he avoids being murdered in Charles's fit of rage, is sent to fight in the army and encounters several near death experiences. Charles is sentenced by Cyrus to stay behind and care for the farm, where he lives alone and lurks around town. There's even a moment where Charles is clearing a field of several large boulders and is smacked by a loose rock on the forehead, leaving a permanent mark behind. This scar would be a source for shame of Charles, much like the mark Cain bore.

The second generation of the Trask family begins when Cathy gives birth to twin boys. Finally freed from her pregnancy burden after a failed attempt at abortion, she leaves Adam in a grand way: she announces she's leaving, that Adam can't stop her, and then shoots him in the shoulder. She then runs off into the city, where she tricks a brothel madam into handing the business over to her. Cathy changes her name to Kate and spends the rest of the novel running a sadistic and debased empire.

Adam becomes distraught by Cathy's departure and goes without caring for his sons. This ends when Sam Hamilton, the man who helped Adam drill water wells on his land, and Lee, a Chinese house servant, encourage him to raise the boys in a loving home and protect them from knowing about the evil of their mother. The boys would be named Aron and Caleb, or Cal.

From a young age, the relationship between Aron and Cal mirrors that of Adam and Charles before them. Aron is passive, while Cal is boisterous and often bullies his brother. Unlike Adam and Charles, though, the two both have a good relationship with their father, who is set to make good on his promise to protect them from knowing about Cathy. He tells them that she died when they were young, and that she's buried back in Connecticut.

Adam receives news that Charles has died, and his fortune is split between Adam and Cathy. Cathy has no interest in the money, and Adam decides to invest his earnings by buying the local ice plant and putting $15,000 into an early form of a refrigerated railcar. The plan fails spectacularly, which makes the Trask family the brunt of jokes all over the city.

Ashamed by his family and annoyed with his brother's newfound since of piousness and superiority, Cal begins to feel aimless, much the same way Charles did before him. By pure coincidence, he discovers that Cathy, or Kate, is still alive and that she is actually his mother. She speculates that the two are a lot alike, which Cal denies.

While Aron is off at Stanford, Cal works with one of Sam Hamilton's sons to devise a scheme that will recover the money Adam lost in the refrigeration business. World War 1 has just started, and the scarcity of beans has caused the commodity to skyrocket. They're able to invest in the crop, and before long, Cal fully recovers the $15,000 his father lost and plans to give Adam the gift at Thanksgiving. Towards the end of this period, Aron returns from Stanford for the break, which leaves Adam overjoyed.

Much like what happened between Adam and Charles, the two boys have gifts for their father. One of them has returned home, the other has a handful of cash. Cal hands the father his money, and of course, Adam's reaction does not go as planned. He says that Cal will return the money, as it's clearly dirty and if not, was earned through exploitation. To make matters worse, Adam tells Cal that if he really wanted to please him, Cal needed to be more like his brother, who has actually given Adam pride in what he's done.

Things tumble out of control from here. Cal, in a fit of rage, takes Aron to see Cathy for himself. The news that his mother is not only alive but a morally depraved mistresses influences Aron to run away from home and enlist in the army. He would be killed during combat.

The news of Aron's death causes Adam to have a stroke, leaving him severely disabled. Cal, wracked with guilt, wanders all throughout the town. It's not until he's encouraged by his girlfriend and Lee that he returns to Adam and asks for forgiveness, which Adam grants him.

Cal's and Aron's connections to Cain and Abel are just as clear here as they were for Adam and Charles. Both boys strive to please their father, while only one is successful in doing so with the "gift" that he gives. Cal's reaction to this rejection leads to a series of events that eventually results in Aron's death. One moment even has Cal answer his father's question of where Aron is with "Am I supposed to look after him?", alluding to Cain's famous question of "Am I my brother's keeper?" when God asks him where Abel is. Aron's death leaves Cal with remorse and a sense of aimlessness, though his remorse is overcome with his father's forgiveness.

“Don’t you see? The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”

There's a scene that takes place between parts one and two of East of Eden that is really deserving of its own post separate from this one. Shortly after Sam Hamilton and Lee convince Adam to raise his then unnamed sons, the three have a conversation about the main source of the novel's allegories, the story of Cain and Abel. The topic of the conversation morphs into the broader ideas of mankind's struggle over evil, as well as our responsibility and capacity to do so. Lee, who had spent time analyzing and studying scripture with Jewish philosophers, explains to Adam and Samuel that different translations of the Bible show God giving Cain different instructions on handling his own sins.

As all versions of the story describe, Cain reacts to God's preference to Abel's gift with extreme anger. Prior to killing his brother, God approaches Cain and speaks to him about overcoming sin. Depending on which version of the Bible you read, God's words to Cain are either an order for him to overcome sin, a promise that he will, or, as Lee points out with the use of the Hebrew word "timshel," a reminder that he has the capacity to choose. Cain, of course, chooses to take the path of sin and receives an everlasting punishment from God because of it. At the same time, God grants Cain an act of mercy by marking him so no other harm can come before him. It's this compassion that somewhat foreshadows how a similar act of compassion would be given to those who have sinned, that being the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

East of Eden ties not only into the grander events of Cain and Abel but also into this choice of overcoming sin or falling to it. This is especially clear with the events following Cal's attempts at regifting Adam's lost money. He didn't have to seek revenge on Aron, but he chose to, and suffered the consequences because of it. The events that followed change him for the better, and it's when Adam forgives Cal on his sick bed that he's reminded that he has the choice to continue triumphing over his personal demons. There are other examples throughout the novel as well; even the setting of Salinas Valley, with its sunny mountains on one side and the gloomy mountains on the other, acts as a metaphor for constantly being between good and evil.

Red also has the capacity to choose, and sometimes chooses wrong.

"Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born?"

Like a lot of other things in East of Eden, there's a particular character that's deserving of her own post. This is, of course, referring to Cathy Ames. From the time she's introduced at the start of the novel, Cathy is clearly nothing but evil incarnate. As a young girl, she falsely accuses boys of attempting to molest her, and takes pleasure in watching them get whipped by their fathers as punishment. She locks her parents in their own home and sets fire to it, painstakingly staging her own murder to trick the town into believing she was gone forever. Her cruelty towards Adam and her twin boys becomes clear when she attempts to abort them on her own, and especially when she shoots Adam on her way out the door. Her sadism comes out in force when she tortures the brothel madam that even considers Cathy as her daughter, and then takes over to run the parlor with a new focus on tormenting "clients."

What's interesting to note here is that while one of the major themes of East of Eden involves that choice between good and evil, Steinbeck wanted to make sure you know that there's no desire or capacity to do good in Cathy. She's the embodiment of the serpent that tempted Eve, and the comparisons are quite literal on occasion. There's one scene where Cathy disturbs Samuel with the way she eats, using her front teeth to chew and flicking her tongue as she swallows. When Samuel helps deliver the twins, she bites him on the hand, which becomes severely infected. Maybe some people truly are just naturally evil.

Opposite of Cathy is Samuel, who for much of the novel is portrayed as a God character. He's a benefactor to the entire Salinas Valley, and keeps his family in debt because of it. After his death his family more or less falls apart, as practically all of his children succumb to their personal weaknesses in the same way the Biblical Adam and Eve did upon leaving the Garden of Eden. Lee, the Chinese house servant that lives with Adam to help raise the boys, acts as a connection between man and God when he mediates discussions between Samuel and Adam and later as a moral compass for Cal.

As Lee mentions during their discussion on Biblical interpretations, the battle between good and evil is one of mankind's oldest stories, if not the oldest. East of Eden captures that battle in a dynamic family setting, showing us how even when we're so far removed from Biblical times, our lives are just as dogged by rationalizing our actions and picking what we can hope is the morally correct choice. This is something that we all will live with from our first steps to our dying days. Hopefully our choices will always be the ones that not only avoid harm to others, but also to our own humanity.

Arkansas - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still, 
and his tune is heard on the distant hill, 
for the caged bird sings of freedom.” 

Every state in the union has a history of racial animosity, violence, or institutionalized racism dating back to colonial times. Some states more than others have a particularly sordid reputation and history of civil rights abuses dating well beyond the Civil War, into the 20th century and even into today. One of these states would be Arkansas.

1919 was a year already plagued by racial violence and riots throughout the country, but the most violent of these incidences would happen in Phillips County, Arkansas. Approximately 100 black farmers met at a church near the town of Elaine to meet with the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America and discuss ways to reach fairer land settlements with white land owners. Two deputized white men arrived, presumably to spy on the meeting due to the fear that there were plans of a "black insurrection." Shots were eventually fired, and one of the white men killed. This quickly tumbled into the Phillips County sheriff leading into town an armed posse that began shooting black men on site; estimates range that anywhere from 200 to 800 black men were killed, along with 5 white men. 122 men, all black, were indicted for various levels of murder by a white-only state grand jury; 12 were sentenced to death after deliberations lasted less than an hour. The NAACP appealed many of these cases and had the original sentencing overturned by the Supreme Court, although many had to flee the state to avoid another wave of vigilante justice.

Perhaps more famous, or infamous, is the story of the Little Rock Nine. Following the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown v Board of Education, the Little Rock School District approved a plan to integrate its public schools to comply with the ruling. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, opposed this plan and enacted the National Guard to prevent nine African American students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower would then mobilize members of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army, which both provided an escort to the nine students and federalized the National Guard, removing the 10,000 member body from Faubus's control. Faubus would continue to battle desegregation, and with the help of the state legislature passed a bill that closed all Little Rock public schools during a period now known as the Lost Year. When schools re-opened, black students were met with a renewed sense of animosity from their white counterparts. To them, it was the black students that were at fault for the schools closing, rather than the systemically racist government that ultimately made that decision.

The issues of racial strife and self-segregation continue to have their presence in Arkansas. Bill Clinton has been jokingly referred to by many as the "first black president" given his growing up in the majority-black city of Hope. The city of Harrison is the location of the national headquarters for the Ku Klux Klan and recently made headlines for billboards promoting white pride organizations. Arkansas's history and racial characteristics inevitably made its way into literature that is based in or around the state, such as the works of Maya Angelou.

As a piece of autobiographical fiction (that is, an autobiography with elements similar to fiction novels,) Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings gives readers a dramatized yet real-life glimpse into the challenges of growing up black in rural Arkansas. Set between the time when Angelou was 3 to 16 years old, the novel follows her and her brother as they experience various coming-of-age situations that challenge their senses of identity and status in a time and setting where racial tensions were still very prevalent.

"If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult." 

The novel starts with Angelou and her brother, Bailey, living with their grandmother they affectionately refer to as Momma in the rural town of Stamps, which is so racially segregated that Angelou was unaware white people existed for the first several years of her childhood. From an early age, Angelou and Bailey have never known a real home. They were sent to Stamps by their parents following their divorce, left as the charge of a porter hired to take care of them. The porter eventually abandoned them somewhere in Arizona, where they then had to hitch trains with only a piece of paper with their final destination written on it and stapled to their clothes. Angelou is bullied by the other black children in Stamps, despite Momma being the de facto matriarch of the black area of town. Her handicapped Uncle Willie, who lives with them, is also the brunt of jokes on account of his disability. Combined with Angelou and Bailey being distraught and confused as to why or how their parents could send them away, the young Angelou struggled with feeling like she ever truly belonged in Stamps.

Making matters worse is Angelou's realization at a young age that life as a black person in a racially segregated town presents unique challenges and burdens. A former white sheriff stops by Momma's general store one night to warn the family that an all-white mob are looking for a black man who acted inappropriately with a white woman, and were placing the blame on Uncle Willie on account of being an easy scapegoat. The family has to quickly hide Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin, lest he be beaten and likely lynched by the mob. Another incident shows Momma, although widely respected throughout the town as a successful businesswoman in the black community, being verbally harassed by a group of white children with one girl going so far as to flash her privates at her. These incidents begin to build a frustration in Angelou and Bailey with the "burden" of being black. All of these frustrations, along with the feeling of abandonment by their mother and father, leads Angelou to destroy the doll of a white, blonde girl her mother sends them for Christmas one year.

This feeling of isolation doesn't limit itself to Stamps. Angelou and her brother eventually move to St. Louis during the middle of Prohibition to live with their mother Vivian. Although kind and affectionate towards Angelou and Bailey, Vivian's friends are involved in organized crime, and their "meanness" personally affects Angelou and limits her ability to consider St. Louis home. This is made worse when Vivian's live-in boyfriend begins sexually molesting and eventually rapes Angelou. Mr. Freeman, the boyfriend, is tried and convicted for rape, but is soon found beaten to death. It's quickly understood that Freeman's outcome was at the hands of her mother's friends. Angelou's thoughts that she might be the only person responsible for these events causes her to go voluntarily mute, her reasoning being that confessing and testifying to the rape lead to the death of a man, so speech should be limited so bad things don't happen again. This eventually frustrates her mother, who decides to send Angelou and Bailey back to Stamps.

Although Angelou begins to develop during this second period of Stamps, having overcome her muteness with the help of the town's own black aristocrat and making her first real friend aside from her brother, it's not until Angelou and her family move to San Francisco that she begins to feel like she finally belongs somewhere. With World War 2 just having started, San Francisco experiences a radical shift in demographics: white men are sent to war, the Japanese are displaced due to the government's internment programs, and African Americans move in to take advantage of the new employment opportunities. Angelou makes history by being the city's first black streetcar operator, which gives her a newfound sense of purpose and responsibility that she had never experienced before. She excels in her studies and graduates early at 16. Her mother's new boyfriend becomes the closest thing to a father-figure that Angelou ever had. The novel ends with her becoming pregnant after a curious fling with a stranger, and the newfound role of motherhood fills her with amazement and the greatest feeling of belonging of all.

"The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all these common forces of nature at the same time she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence."

Viewed from a wide lens, there's quite the contrast between I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and another book mentioned on this blog: To Kill a Mockingbird. While both books follow the stories of young women experiencing prejudices and growing up in the rural south, the similarities more or less end there. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout has the benefit of growing up white with a prominent and highly respected lawyer for a father, and her experiences with prejudice are limited to the ones that Atticus introduces her to or she accidentally stumbles across with her brother. Angelou doesn't have this luxury. The prejudices she experiences are encountered first hand, whether they happen to Momma, Bailey, Uncle Willie, or even herself. Scout had the benefit of growing up during the Depression in a stable household with friends and neighbors. Angelou never felt like she had a home until late into her teenage years, which had burdened her with a debilitating sense of displacement.

Angelou's childhood in Stamps is a constant stream of events that make her realize at a young age that being born both black and female is a curse. As mentioned above, she has to help the family hide Uncle Willie from a white mob. She watches as Momma, the woman who she thought everyone respected and looked up to, is accosted by white children who otherwise had nothing to their names besides being white in a segregated town. At the age of 10, she takes up a housekeeping job with a white woman who treats her as a servant, even going so far as to take Angelou's sense of identity away from her by calling her "Mary" rather than Maya. At her 8th grade graduation, a white public figure brings up how the white schools have received additional funding for state of the art science equipment, and the black schools are turning out nationally famous athletes.

There is one significant similarity between the two books, and that's how both Scout and Angelou come to realize the strength of their relatives. Just like Scout learns that Atticus is something more than just her father, Angelou realizes the same with Momma. Although distraught about how the white children treat Momma, she's amazed at how Momma handles the situation by ignoring the children and humming a Gospel tune to herself. When Angelou has to be taken to a white dentist for a toothache, Momma reminds the dentist that it would be a mistake to turn them away given how much money she, a black woman, had loaned him, a white man, in the past. This incident causes Angelou to look at Momma like "a superhero" who's more than a caretaker, but also an inspiration.

"I wouldn't miss Mrs. Flowers, for she had given me her secrete word which called forth a djinn who was to serve me all my life: books."

Something that's a repeating theme in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the importance of literature as an emotional outlet. From a young age, Angelou turns to reading as a way to escape her feelings of displacement. When she moves to St Louis, she avoids the uncertainty of living around her mother's mobster friends by staying shut in at the library, reading fairy tales that give her courage. When she enters her state of muteness following the trauma of her rapist's trial and murder, Bertha Flowers, Stamps's black aristocrat mentioned earlier, takes Angelou under her wing and instructs her to read books to herself aloud and discuss them with her later. Like for many of us, words in a book take Angelou to places she would have never gone before, and were the one constant thing in her life that she could depend on. It's no doubt this love of reading is what shaped her into the author and poet she would become internationally known for later.

I was originally hesitant to include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in the list of books I would read, given how I was hoping to limit it to fiction books and this is technically an autobiography. I'm very happy that I didn't choose something else. Books like this give us a window to view into the lives and experiences of other people not like us, and just as Maya Angelou read books at a young age to picture herself as a hero in fairy tales or to visit places she had never thought of before, so too can we use books for the same purpose.

On another note, the book is ranked #3 in the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged or banned books, so at least consider taking a look at what the scandal is for yourself.

Arizona - The Bean Trees

“In a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is make things as right as we can.”  

When I was first putting this list together, I assumed that for Arizona I would be reading some iconic western novel that was later adapted into a movie starring John Wayne and then recently remade once again into a box office flop. Like Kansas and flat prairies, Florida and white beaches, and Idaho and potatoes, there's no denying that Arizona has a cultural image of being a vast, barren landscape that's nothing but deserts and tumbleweeds. This conception has made it the prime setting for gritty westerns for decades, which reinforce that image to someone who's never seen the state.

It wasn't until I got into college and met someone from Flagstaff that I learned there were certain areas in the state with mountains and hills covered in towering pines. A few years later, Jessica and I drove through Flagstaff ourselves and actually encountered a sudden ice storm that shut down stretches of the highway. It even snowed while we were at the Grand Canyon, and heavily. Did you know that nearly 29% of the country's lettuce supply comes from Arizona alone, and 95% of that lettuce is grown in only one county?

The Bean Trees is a story that's made to be set in Arizona, but not in the clichéd way that we might expect from decades of Hollywood storytelling. There are no gun fights, no campfires, and no important trains to catch or hold hostage. Instead we get a heartwarming, and often bittersweet, story about individuals who rely on a strong group of friends that become more of a family to get by.

Originally published in 1988 by Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees is told from the perspective of a young woman named Taylor Greer. Born and raised in eastern Kentucky, she realizes that if she doesn't get out of her town and soon, she's likely going to end up like the other girls she knows and the women who came before them; that is, pregnant and married (in that order) at a young age. She saves some money and buys a worn out Volkswagen, setting her sites west for Oklahoma and Cherokee Nation. Based on her grandfather's stories, Taylor should have enough Cherokee blood for her to join the reservation and start over there, but after seeing the barren flatness of the Oklahoma prairies she decides to drive as far west as she can until the car breaks down. She makes it to Tucson before the car gives out from two flat tires.

Of course, the road trip isn't without major events. In the parking lot of a bar in Oklahoma, before leaving to head further west, Taylor is followed to her car by a woman. The woman opens the passenger door and lays something on the seat, then turns to go. Taylor realizes that the woman has left a baby girl behind. She attempts to stop the woman, who only says that the baby's mother is dead and she would like Taylor to care for it. Taylor drives away with the baby girl, effectively becoming her foster mother. Later on, the baby earns the nickname "Turtle" given her clinginess and strong grip, similar to how strongly a snapping turtle will latch onto something.

Taylor and Turtle's arrival to Tucson kicks off by meeting a woman named Mattie, who owns and runs an auto shop with a huge mural of Jesus Christ on the side, humorously named "Jesus Is Lord Used Tires." Mattie and Taylor foster a relationship when she gives Taylor a job at the store, and introduces her to a couple named Estevan and Esperanza. Taylor lands a roommate named Lou Ann, another native Kentuckian with a baby, and meets some of Lou Ann's more eccentric neighbors. Throughout the novel the backstories and the developments of these characters are fleshed out; Taylor goes from being a feisty individual to one who begins to appreciate and rely on her new community, while Lou Ann's self-doubt following her husband's abandonment is replaced by a new sense of self-empowerment. Most of these changes come from the shared experiences and encouragement of this group of strangers that eventually become more of a family.

The central conflict of the novel involves Estevan and Esperanza, who Taylor eventually learns are political refugees from Guatemala. Both were educators who had connections to the teachers union, a target of the government. Rather than disclose the names of their fellow union members, they fled, ensuring that they would be assassinated if they ever returned. The other focal point of the novel regards Taylor's efforts to raise Turtle, who has been diagnosed with "failure to thrive" due to her history of being both physically and sexually abused, and her efforts to adopt her legally. Both conflicts are resolved towards the end of the book, with Taylor becoming Turtle's legal mother, and Estevan and Esperanza making their way to a safe house and legal aide in Oklahoma.

The plots mentioned above, along with interactions with other characters, are a period of great growth for Taylor and what drive her character to be developed. Right from the start, she experiences a mix of painful irony and coincidences that shake up her expectations she had of how her life would be when she left Kentucky. Her main reason for leaving is to avoid the trend of becoming pregnant, only to be saddled down with a baby before she even arrives to her final destination. She wanted to settle in Oklahoma, but had to keep going once she realized it wasn't what she expected. Due to a traumatic event from her childhood, she experiences great discomfort and anxiety around tires, but gets a job in Tucson at an auto shop (this particular savior being Jesus Is Lord Used Tires.) As briefly mentioned above, Taylor moves from having expectations of going alone to realizing the importance and benefits of having a strong network of friends and family by her side, especially when it comes to the health and well-being of Turtle. This kicks off one of the first major themes of the novel: the struggle between maintaining individuality and community.

“We do have some strong traditions of community in the United States, but it’s interesting to me that our traditionally patriotic imagery in this country celebrates the individual, the solo flier, independence. We celebrate Independence Day; we don’t celebrate We Desperately Rely on Others Day. Oh, I guess that’s Mother’s Day. It does strike me that our great American mythology tends to celebrate separate achievement and separateness, when in fact nobody does anything alone.”  

All characters rely on the efforts of others in some form or capacity throughout the novel. Taylor takes advantage of the mall's free daycare while she works her day job, stopping by occasionally to give the impression that she's actually shopping. Lou Ann benefits from a sense of sisterhood with Taylor and her neighbors which, along with getting a new and exciting job, helps her move on from her husband's abandonment. Mattie, who uses her tire shop as a safe haven for refugees, including Estevan and Esperanza, eventually relies on Taylor to help move them into Oklahoma. I think this is an important part to point out; throughout much of the book, Mattie is the character most shown to have everything together, but still has a moment where she depends on others.

Of course, Estevan and Esperanza rely on this community most of all given their asylum status, and Kingsolver uses their situation to bring up the plight of immigrants that are seeking refuge from political violence but feel as if they have nowhere to go without volunteered compassion. But the novel also draws some parallels between those scenarios to Taylor's life in her new city. Kingsolver makes it a point in the novel that she and Turtle are more or less refugees, arriving with no prospects or connections, who were just so lucky to have their car breakdown in front of the shop of a very kind and helpful woman who takes on the role of their "sponsor." Without Mattie, Taylor would likely have struggled to find her footing in Tucson. Maybe there's a possibility that she would have eventually given up and tried to return to Kentucky. It's the kindness and generosity of the strangers that she meets and later befriends that give her new life and home meaning.

This isn't to say that Taylor completely loses her sense of individuality. She still has the feisty personality that she left Kentucky with, especially when she's talking with Lou Ann and trying to build her self-esteem. There's a rather humorous exchange where she compares her thoughts on men to something she read in an toilet installation manual:

"Here’s what it said on the package; I kept it till I knew it by heart: ‘Please Note. Parts are included for all installations, but no installation requires all of the parts.’ That’s kind of my philosophy about men. I don’t think there’s an installation out there that could use all of my parts.”  

There's also a theme in The Bean Trees about the importance of the environment which, if you weren't really sitting down to think about, could be pretty easily overlooked. The reason this might be is because it's not your traditional environmentalist message of "everything is being destroyed and we have to save it," but rather "everything that might seem ugly has beauty in it." The back of Mattie's tire shop is cluttered with used car parts, but also has a space for a quaint little garden. Taylor and Lou Ann often bring their children to a park that's known by the kids as "Dog Doo Park," but is also full of wisterias that flower and then develop pods, which captivate Turtle (Turtle confuses these pods for beans, explaining the novel's title.) One scene of the novel involves Mattie driving Taylor, Estevan, and Esperanza out into the desert to witness the first storm of the year and to "smell the rain," which Taylor describes as remarkable. Where there is literally nothing, all of a sudden something incredible happens.

Red, surrounded by bean trees (Note: not actually bean trees)

I loved reading this book. The bonds that the characters develop with each other are all very heartwarming, and the more explicit details of Estevan and Esperanza's backstory are devastating but in a way that makes you care for them and appreciate the other characters' efforts to help them even more.

The one major complaint I have is that despite being the catalyst to Taylor's new life, Turtle almost seems like a forgotten character. To be fair, there's only so much story you can make out of a character that for most of the book can't even speak. On the other hand, we learn at one point in the book that Turtle was almost kidnapped at a park while her baby sitter was distracted, which causes Turtle to enter a state of shock and lose progress in her speech development. This just about ends as soon as it begins, because Turtle snaps out of it rather quickly and goes back to being herself as if nothing had happened. There's an argument you could make here that Turtle now knows that she's surrounded by people that love her and this gives her the courage and strength to return to normalcy, but the whole incident comes off as an afterthought made to add more drama to an already good story.

Despite this criticism, The Bean Trees packs a great amount of story into a relatively short book, clocking in at around 230 pages in hardcover print. It's a book well worth reading and experiencing for yourself rather than from someone else's perspective, much like the state of Arizona.