Her parents worked in a public health capacity, and the family lived without electricity or running water.Īfter graduating from high school, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship, studying classical piano. When Kingsolver was seven years old, her father, a physician, took the family to the former Republic of Congo in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kingsolver was born in Annapolis, Maryland in 1955 and grew up in Carlisle in rural Kentucky. In 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize to support 'literature of social change.' She has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, including the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, for The Lacuna and the National Humanities Medal. Each of her books published since 1993 have been on The New York Times Best Seller list. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. The crisis quickly envelops not only Turtle and her guardian, but everyone else who touches their lives in a complex web connecting their future with their past.Įmbark on a unforgettable road trip from rural Kentucky and the urban Southwest to Heaven, Oklahoma, and the Cherokee Nation, testing the boundaries of family and the many separate truths about the ties that bind.īarbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. But Turtle's moment of celebrity draws her into a conflict of historic proportions stemming right back to her Cherokee roots. The mother and adopted daughter duo soon become nationwide heroes - even landing themselves a guest appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Her insistence on what she has seen, and her mother's belief in her, lead to a man's dramatic rescue.

Six-year-old Turtle Greer witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam during a tour of the Grand Canyon with her guardian, Taylor. Mother and adopted daughter, Taylor and Turtle Greer, are back in this spellbinding sequel about family, heartbreak and love.

Pigs in Heaven continues the story of Taylor and Turtle, first introduced in The Bean Trees.

Pigs in heaven by barbara kingsolver