I first read this story back in the early 90s. I say “story” rather than book. A book is a collection of paper glued together with a spine. A story has heart. And this story has a bloody muscle that pulses like the Mother Earth herself.
First published in 1988, The Bean Trees is Barbara Kingsolver’s debut novel. In case you don’t know it, I’m a Barbara Kingsolver fan through and through. Pigs in Heaven, Animal Dreams, The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, all are heartfelt stories told with a lyrical literary voice that rings true and takes me so far inside it’s hard to find a way out. Not that I want to.
Like Kingsolver, Miss Marietta Greer, grew up in rural Kentucky and made the move to Tucson Arizona with her daughter. Like me, Miss Marietta Greer, changed her name (to Taylor on account of a street sign) packed up her car (a ’55 push-start-clutch-pop-Volkswagen) and headed west. There’s something about a new identity and the open road that initiates the hero’s journey and this, is a hero’s journey extraordinaire.
While driving through central Oklahoma, Taylor reminisces how her mother used to say they had “head rights” on the Cherokee Nation because her old grandpa was full-blooded Cherokee. Taylor finds her “head rights” in the form of a baby girl who’s pressed upon her by a desperate Cherokee woman outside a bar owned by, you guessed it, Earl. Having encountered the two men who are part of this affair inside Earl’s bar, and hearing the woman’s desperation: “My dead sister’s … This baby’s got no papers. There isn’t nobody knows it’s alive, or cares … This baby was born in a Plymouth,” Taylor accepts the child who clings to her so tightly, she names her Turtle, having never asked the child’s name.
As in any hero’s journey, Taylor and Turtle, find allies, in the form of new friends who offer a job and a place to live in Tucson. Mattie, who hires Taylor at her tire store, is part of an underground railroad for illegal refugees. She introduces Taylor to Estevan and Esperanza, a Mayan couple who managed to escape Guatemala but not before their child was kidnapped by their oppressors. They become family to Taylor and Turtle and aid in solving the legal problems that threaten to pull this mother and child apart.
Turtle, who we discover is actually a sexually-abused-three-year-old, remains mute for ages, but when she does speak she talks vegetables, rhyming them off like she’s reading a Burpee’s catalogue out loud.
This is a story of love, hope, friendship, family, and belonging that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
