Kingsolver (The Bean Trees, 1987; Homeland, 1989; Holding the Line,
1989) now offers a complex but overly calculated novel - unsubtle
messages set against spectacular southwestern scenery. Codi Noline
takes a job teaching high school in her hometown of Grace, Arizona,
partly in order to keep an eye on her doctor father, ailing With
Alzheimer's disease, but mostly because - unlike her idolized
sister Hallie, who's off in Nicaragua improving Sandinista
agriculture until her kidnapping and murder by the contras - Codi
has no direction to her life. She always felt like an outsider in
Grace, a folkways-rich century-old Spanish-American town where
almost everyone is related. She was three when her mother died;
later, pregnant after a brief high-school affair with handsome
Apache Loyd Peregrina, she lost the stillborn baby. As an adult,
Codi is reluctant to form attachments. But once back in town, she
nervously resumes her relationship with Loyd (who never knew about
the pregnancy). Along the way, Codi - who whines that Hallie is the
idealist, that she herself stands for nothing - lectures him about
cruelty to animals (he gives up cockfighting); risks dismissal by
the school board by teaching about environmentalism and birth
control (she's named Teacher of the Year); and helps the Stitch and
Bitch ladies' sewing-club stop the mining company from poisoning
the river and the orchards. Kingsolver has political conviction, a
wonderful eye for the surface of things and many charming poetic
conceits, but here her characters seem constructed rather than
real. A promising miss. (Kirkus Reviews)
As far back as she can remember, Codi Noline had felt an outsider in her hometown of Grace, Arizona. Her dispassionate father - 'an obelisk of disapproval' - had always kept Codi and her sister Hallie apart from most of the townspeople. But now Hallie is abroad and Codi, troubled and lost, is returning after a fifteen-year absence to confront her past and face her ailing father.
What Codi finds is a town threatened by a silent catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. And what she learns about herself though experiences, dreams and conversations becomes an invaluable tool to unravelling the discontent - and the 'something' that has haunted her since childhood.
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