
It is summer in the Appalachian mountains & love desire & attraction are in the air Nature too it seems is not immune From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin Deanna Wolfe a reclusive wildlife biologist watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces & interrupts her self-assured solitary life On a farm several miles down the mountain Lusa Maluf Landowski a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife finds herself marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own & a few more miles down the road a pair of elderly feuding neighbours tend their respective farms & wrangle about God pesticides & the possibilities of a future neither of them expected Over the course of one humid summer these characters find their connections of love to one another & to the surrounding nature with which they share a place With its strong balance of narrative & drama Prodigal Summer is stands alongside The Poisonwood Bible & The Lacuna as one of Barbara Kingsolver's finest works