Plot summary
Prodigal Summer tells the story of a small town in Appalachia during a single, humid summer, when three interweaving stories of love, loss and family unfold against the backdrop of the lush wildness of Virginia mountains. The narrative follows Deanna, a solitary woman working as a park ranger; Lusa, a recently widowed entomologist at odds with her late farmer husband's tight-knit family; and Garnett, an old man who dreams of restoring the lineage of the extinct American Chestnut tree.
Kingsolver's extensive education in biology is on display in this book, laden with ecological concepts and biological facts. Her writing also exhibits her knowledge of rural Virginia, where she has lived for decades. In the acknowledgments Kingsolver thanks her Virginia friends and neighbors, as well as Fred Herbard of the American Chestnut Foundation. [1]
Barbara Ellen Kingsolver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments.
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Shiloh is a Newbery Medal-winning children's novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor published in 1991. The 65th book by Naylor, it is the first in a quartet about a young boy and the title character, an abused dog. Naylor decided to write Shiloh after an emotionally taxing experience in West Virginia where she encountered an abused dog.
Obasan is a novel by Japanese-Canadian author Joy Kogawa. First published by Lester and Orpen Dennys in 1981, it chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War from the perspective of a young child. In 2005, it was the One Book, One Vancouver selection.
Meadowview is a census-designated place (CDP) in Washington County, Virginia, United States. The population was 861 at the 2020 census. down from 967 at the 2010 census.
Melanie Tem was an American horror and dark fantasy author.
Silas Dwane House is an American writer best known for his novels. He is also a music journalist, environmental activist, and columnist. His fiction is known for its attention to the natural world, working-class characters, and the plight of the rural place and rural people. House is also known as a representative for LGBTQ Appalachians and Southerners, and is among the most visible LGBTQ people associated with rural America.
Catherine Ryan Hyde is an American novelist and short story writer, with more recent forays and notable success in transitioning from traditional publication towards the world of eBook publication. Her novels have enjoyed bestseller status in both the U.S. and U.K., and her short stories have won many awards and honors. Her book Pay It Forward, was later adapted into a film of the same name and her novel Electric God is currently in development.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007) is a non-fiction book by Barbara Kingsolver detailing her family's attempt to eat only locally grown food for an entire year.
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a novelist who has received many awards for her fiction, including two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships, a California Arts Council Fellowship, a Yaddo Fellowship, the American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, the Saturday Evening Post Fiction Award, the Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction, two Pushcart nominations, and the Devil's Kitchen Fiction Award. She is a six-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a three-time finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award.
Mark Powell is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, most recently The Late Rebellion and Hurricane Season. A highly decorated author, he has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Breadloaf Writers' Conference, as well as two Fulbright Fellowships. Educated at The Citadel, The University of South Carolina, and Yale Divinity School, Powell teaches in the English Department at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. He repeatedly serves as the fiction workshop leader for the Hindman Settlement School's Appalachian Writers Workshop and the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University. Powell's early work has established him in the southern Appalachian tradition alongside writers such as Pamela Duncan, Silas House and Ron Rash. His recent fiction is more global in scope, in the vein of Robert Stone and Bob Shacochis.
Mudbound (2008) is the debut novel by American author Hillary Jordan. It has been translated into French, Italian, Serbian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Turkish and has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide. The novel took Jordan seven years to write. She started it while studying for an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. It was adapted as a 2017 film of the same title.
The Lacuna is a 2009 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is Kingsolver's sixth novel, and won the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Library of Virginia Literary Award. It was shortlisted for the 2011 International Dublin Literary Award. Kingsolver won the 2010 Women's Prize for Fiction for the novel.
Flight Behavior is a 2012 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It is her seventh novel, a New York Times bestseller, and was declared "Best book of the year" by the Washington Post and USA Today.
Liani Gwen Kotcher is an American young-adult fiction writer, journalist, and entertainment host, best known for her contemporary romance novel Prodigal.Prodigal tells the story of a romance between two teenagers from different religious and economic backgrounds that find love in unexpected places. The novel reached number 1 on The Amazon Best Sellers List for its category in February 2013.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a 2013 novel by the American writer Karen Joy Fowler. The novel won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was also short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize.
The Widows' Adventure is a 1989 fiction novel written by Charles Dickinson, centered on two widowed sisters who embark on an unlikely trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, setting off a comic family odyssey of revelation and reconciliation.
Unsheltered is a 2018 novel by Barbara Kingsolver published by HarperCollins. It follows two families living in the same house at two separate time periods in Vineland, New Jersey. The novel alternates between the 21st century and the 19th century, using the last words of one chapter as the title of the next one. One family lived in the house in the 1800s and the other family resides in the house in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Demon Copperhead is a 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver. It was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Kingsolver was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel David Copperfield. While Kingsolver's novel is similarly about a boy who experiences poverty, Demon Copperhead is set in Appalachia and explores contemporary issues.
