Barbara Kingsolver's Small Wonder

Barbara Kingsolver

I finished Small Wonder this morning. It is a book of 23 essays by Barbara Kingsolver. And it is a wonder.

The woman writes a fine essay. She made me smile, think, cry, and get angry all at once. Quite a feat.

Usually I read a book of essays in order but this time I started in the middle and read backward to the first one and then started over with the final essay and read toward the middle.

I read her Foreward last. In it, Kingsolver writes that she began the book on September 11, 2001. She didn't know it would would end up as a collection. Instead it began as one woman's response to the terrorist attacks.

I can not find fault with her ideas and opinions about war, family, community, home and homelessness, and the fragility of our planet's flora and fauna. She digs deep and I often found myself weeping at her words.

She mentions a previous book of essays published in 1995. So of course that one, High Tide in Tuscon: Essays from Now or Ever, is now on my To Be Read list. One book leads to another.

Small Wonder

Am loving the essays in Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver. This novelist and essayist has degrees in biology and most of her thoughts in this book are pleas for the planet. I know she has written many fiction books but it is her essays that interest me. I have not read any of her fiction.

She grew up in rural Kentucky and has an affinity for the planet and its creatures. She and her family now live on a farm in Virginia and, according to her website, have an extensive vegetable garden and raise Icelandic sheep (who knew?). She won the Orange Prize in 2010 for her book The Lacuna.

But back to the essays. Most begin with a personal story that then leads into the heart of what she wants to say. They are informative and inspiring. Kingsolver writes with affection about hiking with her family along the San Pedro river in the desert; of seeing brightly colored macaws flying from tree to tree in the jungle; and, of her daughter Lily's experience with raising chickens.

That's the good news. The bad news is the river is drying up due to development of the lands along it. The macaws are an endangered species and she was thrilled to see them in their natural habitat against the blue sky and not through the bars of a cage in a zoo or, heaven forbid, a pet shop. Although her daughter's chickens offered free breakfast with the laying of the first egg, it also brought on a conversation about corporate farming and the injunction not to name the animals you are raising to eat.

All these pieces are written with warmth, humor, and intelligence. They will break your heart if you linger too long.

From the dilemma of whether to kill a hermit crab that has taken up residence in a perfect conch shell on the beach (they didn't) to the killings at Columbine High School, Kingsolver's essays make me stop and ponder the world and its infinite variety and consider what small steps I can take to protect it.