What I'm reading this week

This week I've been rereading one of my old favorites, Barbara Kingsolver's Pigs In Heaven. I am facinated by her poetic use of words and her nonfeminist views.

The beginning of the story links back to the previous novel that begins Taylor and Turtle's adventure and as they continue forward their lives become rocky again.

Taylor has never formally adopted Turtle, so when Turtle saves Lucky Buster, who fell down a hole at the Hoover Dam, she is a hero. She lands a spot on a talk show, doing an expose about child hero's this is where Annawake Fourkiller learns about Turtle and the possible illegal adoption.

The story is the connection of many lives. Taylor and Turtle are not the only one's affected in the situation of Turtle being taken from the reservation, Turtle has a grandfather and an aunt and many other distant family members who feel the loss of this child.

If the problem was simply about Turtle and Taylor then the issue would be a simple one, the reader would want Turtle to stay with Taylor, but as a good writer and as a woman of the world Kingsolver has added in all the other people affected by the decision.

Taylor does her best with Turtle but the novel does show the importance of Turtle knowing her past. She does not like milk and Annawake knows this before even meeting Turtle. It's a trait that Annawake knows about and Taylor doesn't know how to deal with this problem, and that is just one example of the problems of raising this Cherokee child away from her people.

But it seems to me that Kingsolver wants us to decide how we feel for ourselves.