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Pigs in Heaven
Pigs in Heaven
Pigs in Heaven
Audiobook (abridged)2 hours

Pigs in Heaven

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this audiobook

Picking up where her modern classic The Bean Trees left off, Barbara Kingsolver’s bestselling Pigs in Heaven continues the tale of Turtle and Taylor Greer, a Native American girl and her adoptive mother who have settled in Tucson, Arizona, as they both try to overcome their difficult pasts.

Taking place three years after The Bean Trees, Taylor is now dating a musician named Jax and has officially adopted Turtle. But when a lawyer for the Cherokee Nation begins to investigate the adoption—their new life together begins to crumble.

Depicting the clash between fierce family love and tribal law, poverty and means, abandonment and belonging, Pigs in Heaven is a morally wrenching, gently humorous work of fiction that speaks equally to the head and the heart.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateNov 8, 2005
ISBN9780060894573
Pigs in Heaven
Author

Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, and The Bean Trees, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. Her work of narrative nonfiction is the influential bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts, as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work. She lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia. 

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Reviews for Pigs in Heaven

Rating: 4.316831683168317 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Meh. A bit too predictable for my taste. Not my favorite of her work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I very much enjoyed this book. There is a strong cultural dynamic, as well as the theme of motherhood and fear of loss. The characters are mostly compelling and, while the resolution is all a bit too neat, the story effectively drew me in throughout. Definitely one of the best things I've read this year, though, to be fair, the year thus far has been pretty well occupied by assigned readings.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    ok, I'm rereading this now. Bean Trees and this one, the books I fell in love with in High School. I had it "reviewed" on here before, but think I was on crack or something, cause it only had 2 stars...yeah, it's clearly not that, not then and not now.Kingsolvers voice for me is what made the two mentioned books so involving for me. The characters were real and haunting, and I've spent years thinking about the characters, though not obsessively so, because that would be crazy, but in the way that I compare books. For years after reading Bean Trees, and the better Pigs in Heaven, I searched in vain for authors that had Kingsolvers way with pen. Alas it was to no avail. Not even Kingsolver compared with her various other stories. Of course, now I've found some I love and return to again and again. The joys of obsessive reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The author is a wonderful storyteller. The stomp dance scene came alive for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a story about the many dimensions of family and culture. Turtle Greer is the "adopted" daughter of Taylor Greer. She was abandoned to Taylor by an unknown woman in a parking lot. She had been abused as a toddler. Taylor went through a phony adoption process to give some measure of legal status to the three-year old girl, who is clearly a native American. Several years later, as the result of an incident that gave the child fleeting national exposure, an Indian lawyer from the Cherokee nation identifies the child as an Indian, most likely from the Cherokee tribe. Annawake Fourkiller, new out of law school, knows that the placement of the child with a white woman contravenes the law, which holds that Indian children cannot be adopted by white families without the consent of the tribe. (Annawake has had a painful family experience where her twin brother was whisked away for adoption and not seen again.) She finds out that the adoption was falsified, and, in any event, could not have been done legally without the tribe's consent. She makes inquiries of Taylor about this which causes Taylor, who has developed a deep motherly attachment to Turtle, to flee with the child to avoid the possibility she will have to give her up.Taylor's mother, Alice, from Kentucky, has a distant connection with the Cherokees in Oklahoma. Running from a loveless marriage she goes to the reservation to reconnect with her childhood cousin, Sugar Boss from Heaven, Oklahoma. There, she finds out about the lawyer's interest in locating Turtle and trys to come up with a solution. She discovers that by distant bloodline she is eligible for membership in the tribe.In the meantime, Taylor and the child have located to the northwest where she struggles to make ends meet. She has little contact with her family (a boyfriend and close friends) back in Arizona), not revealing to anyone where she and the child are living. It is clear that Kingsolver means to show that without the network of support that family provides, life is very lonely and difficult.Alice realizes that family and shared cultural identity are deeply held values among the Cherokees. She experiences how the Cherokees perceive themselves as a more than extended family and how young and old share ties and common rituals that bind them to each other. Interestingly, the poverty and ramshackle nature of the nation's circumstances on the reservation do not in the slightest way mar the strong ties the tribe's members hold for each other. She wants to protect Turtle and Taylor, but she shows some ambivalence about the countermanding imperative for tribal cohesion that underlies Annawake's intent to have the child returned to tribal custody. In contrast to the tribe's unity and mutual support in the midst of great poverty, Taylor's struggles to provide for Turtle are heightened by her isolation from family.There is a solution to the problem. Although a bit deus ex machina in nature, Kingsolver's climax involves matchmaking of Alice's cousin and acquaintances with a tribal member, Cash Stillman, who has recently returned from a self-imposed exile in Wyoming. Cash Stillman turns out to be the child's grandfather. With him in the picture, the tribal court is able to arrange joint custody so that the child can learn about her heritage while remaining with her mother. It's a tad of a stretch, but it works fine.What's important about this fine novel is its emphasis on the meanings of the family connections that define who we are. Taylor has a love for Turtle so strong that she flees her family and tries to protect the child, though struggling terribly to make a life for them in a strange city. (Note the contrasts from where she left, near Tucson, to where they end up -- the Pacific northwest. And, see how Taylor has had a very unconventional "family", really a sort of hippieish community, but nonetheless a family.) On the other side, the deep cultural roots of the Indians are plainly to be seen. The intertwinings of their shared society go way beyond common understood conceptions of an "extended" family.The book tells the history of the grossly misguided attempts of white society to eradicate Indian culture and how this is the impetus behind the late day efforts (and laws) to preserve their identity. There is the opportunity in the novel to remember the displacement of Cherokees from the southeast to "territory no one else wanted" via the infamous "Trail of Tears". Cash himself is a product of the notorious boarding schools of the 20th century which were aimed at "Americanizing" Indian youth. (To be honest we must call this, along with overt slaughter of the 19th century, genocidal in nature.) I've not yet been disappointed by Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacunae, and now Pigs in Heaven. As you start her novels you wonder "now where's she going with this?", but as you get further along you think, "oh, wow".
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Taylor's love for Turtle, her adopted daughter, is palpable in this tale of twists of fate. After being handed this bruised and abused little girl, Taylor and Turtle make a family for themselves. Out of the blue, Annawake Fourkiller shows up at Taylor's doorstep, after seeing the two on the Oprah show. Annawake informs Taylor that Turtle was illegally adopted and must now be returned to her Cherokee tribe. As only Kingsolver can, this story twists and turns until all its characters are discovered, firmly linked together. This is characteristic of the interconnectedness of nature, which is the backdrop for this wonderful tale. Kingsolver is a brilliant writer, who crafts stories with rich characters and enveloping emotions. I'm so glad I've finally read this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Read this ages ago, don't remember what it's about, but I remember loving it and it turned me on to Barbara Kingsolver (a wonderful thing). Maybe I'll have to go back and re-read it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    DELIGHTFUL - BARBARA KINGSOLVER IS A MASTERFUL STORYTELLER AND WEAVES A HEART TOUCHING TALE IN A SHORT STORY THAT REALLY BEAUTIFULLY ENCAPSULATES CENTURIES OF HISTORY AND DRAMA IN THE UNIR=TED STATES AND HOW THAT HISTORY STILL IMPACTS PEOPLES LIVES TODAY - SUPERB
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Even though it's not one of my favorites of BK, it more than satisfied me by continuing the saga of Taylor Greer and company (from The Bean Trees). Plus, you have to love the final scene.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Re-reading this after many years - I had forgotten how utterly lovely it was. Magical and uplifting. Barbara Kingsolver is endlessly wonderful....
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While it had the same likable characters returning from the Bean Trees and was definitely an enjoyable read, this book fell a little short when it came to capturing the magic its predecessor had.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Brilliant, brilliant book. It starts off with a startling array of niceness - nice family, nice lifestyle, a miasma of likeability. The boyfriend in particular is way too good to be true (he actually invites his girlfriend's mother to come and live with them, and appears to welcome the prospect. Blokes like that don't exist outside of fiction). The reason for all this likeability becomes clear when it emerges that this book centres around a tug-of-love situation, and ensures that we don't know which side to sympathise with.Some skilfuly dropped clues ensure that the reader is always one step ahead of the characters and anticipating the next step, and good pacing ensures that it is a while before they catch up, so the suspense is ensured. Like all the other books I have read by this author, the research is thorough without weighing down the plot, and it is compelling, humorous and informative.I had no idea that this was part of a series, but upon finishing it I discovered 'The Bean Trees' in a second hand shop and found out that it was a prequel to this one, so guess what I read next.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I actually liked this book better than the first, The Bean Trees. Which was surprising because before I started it my mom had told me she didn't like the sequel as much as the original. Still, it certainly wasn't my favorite Kingsolver. I much prefer The Poisonwood Bible.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the sequel to the Bean Trees. Turtle, as a result of a rescue publicized on national TV, is identified as the lost child of a Cherokee band. (Taylor had adopted Turtle, who had been thrust at her by the mother at a truck stop, who then disappeared). The fudged adoption comes to light and the novel focuses on the competing claims as to where Turle belongs. On the one side isTaylor, the white mother, who did not seek to scoop a Native child, but was herself very young and inexperienced when the child was given to her. Taylor has been an exemplary mother and there is a strong and healthy bond between her and Turtle. On the other side is the Cherokee band, whose lawyer lays out the multitude of reasons why Turtle belongs with her people. Kingsolver does an excellent job in showing the validity of the claims of both sides. But the child cannot be sawed into half. The novel is the story of the conflict and its resolution, which turned out to be too convenient and facile -- creating an "everybody wins" scenario. This is the one aspect of this book I dislike. Other than that, I adore Kingsolver's writing and these characters.I read this book a couple of years before I moved to Manitoba, with its large Indigenous population and its history of systematically taking Indigenous kids away from their parents. Since I am a social work educator, this is an important issue for me to grasp and I found that Kingsolver's novel helped me to gain some insight into why it is so important for these children to remain in their communities.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am always struck by how good Kingsolver is when I start one of her books. I don't know why I forget this in between. In all of Kingsolver's books that I have read she does a great job depicting women and women's community (something I am often impatient with but which rings absolutely true for me in her books), and in Pigs in Heaven the juggling of multiple character points of view and of multiple ways of seeing the world--and the way the reader is made to empathize with all of them--is particularly well done.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A bit disappointing. I enjoyed The Bean Trees more.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is a story about the adoption rights of American Indians. The characters and theme of the story is interesting but the content of the discussion among characters is distracting and boring. The author attempts to make it humorous but I consider much of it sad, unfortunate, and stupid. The ending is predictable. There is a vague attempt to teach about American Indian culture but it is weak and incomplete. I can not recommend this book as it is not worth reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I’m not impartial. I’ve loved everything I’ve ever read by Barbara Kingsolver. This one fascinated me in part because of it’s strong women characters and part due to the Cherokee culture I learned. The issue of what would happen to Turtle was a conundrum right up to the last few sentences. Then suddenly, resolution, and the short book ended. I do like a good story that doesn’t go on for hundreds of pages or dozens of hours. Recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ahh, Barbara Kingsolver. Like a cup of tea or a warm bath, you can just swim in her language and story.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    3.5 starsTaylor adopted a little Native girl, 3-year old Turtle, after Turtle was "dumped" on her by a stranger saying to take care of her. When Turtle is 6, something happens to bring the two of them into the limelight, and they are noticed by Annawake, a Cherokee lawyer who insists the adoption is illegal and sets out to bring Turtle back to the Cherokee Nation and to her roots. It was a bit slow at times, but whenever Taylor and Annawake interacted, I was riveted. But, there wasn't enough of that for me. I thought the ending was a little too nice and neat for me, very unrealistic, I thought. I liked some of the characters, well, particularly one: Taylor's boyfriend, Jax, who was quirky, but very likeable. Overall, it was still good, but I think it could have been better, although I don't know how I would have wanted it to end, but it just wasn't realistic enough for me.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked this book. I felt that it was political spin off from the Bean Trees. Taylor and Turtle explore moral and legal issues. Just like the first book Pigs in Heaven really brought the characters to life and was interesting. I would recomend this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The continuing story of Taylor and Turtle involves new and previously known characters. If you were missing them, you get to know them better, as well as learn more about the connection between Taylor and Turtle.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Love Kingsolver!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very nice character study; clever story/settings & nice background descriptions of American Indian adoption laws, Thoroughly enjoyable read. One of her best!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In the first book of this short series, [The Bean Trees], Taylor Green has an abused Indian toddler unexpectedly thrust into her arms from the back of a car. It was a great story of making a family from those who don't share your blood, but I was constantly thinking “Wait a minute – adoptions don't happen this way – no way, no how.”In this sequel the child called Turtle, who is still only minimally verbal, insists that she has seen a man fall into a dangerous place. Taylor believes her, and persists with unbelieving authorities until she finally gets someone to listen. The man is rescued. The resultant publicity brings Turtle to national acclaim, including tribal social workers.It becomes a beautiful story of the conflict when an abused and neglected child, coming out of her shell and attached to her adoptive white Mom, is claimed by her tribe and members of her extended family.The characters are all well realized. We see the backstory and pain of individual tribal family members and the whole of a nation whose children were removed from them. How can there be any winners in this situation? Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is the sequel to [The Bean Trees]. It's really not absolutely necessary to read the two books in order, but it is recommended. This is more contrived, I think ... good intentions always triumph over bad reality. But Kingsolver is a talented writer and a good story-teller.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this book fun to read with a host of memorable, entertaining characters, most of of whom I liked. It dealt with a difficult dilemma which was perhaps too neatly solved but it made me happy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Another fine Kingsolver story. I initially avoided reading her books, despite recommendations from people I kind-of knew! The reason I avoided them was that they sounded too heavily laden with socio-political messages, and I don't read fiction to be preached at. However, what I've found is that this author is remarkably skillful in creating characters and situations with which I could identify and become emotionally involved, despite their apparent distance from my own situation. This story is a classic example. The obvious target audience groups are mothers and native americans, and to neither of which do I belong. Kingsolver sets up a story of Cherokee versus mother, but she does it in such a way that this reader felt equally drawn to both sides. The justice of both the mother's position and the Indian's position is made evident and we can't see how this can resolve satisfactorily. Of course the conclusion doesn't have to be completely satisfactory, because life isn't like that, but nonetheless, Kingsolver's ultimate message is that love does have the power to take us beyond motherhood or genetic ancestry. Yes, the last couple of chapters did move me to tears, but I'm that sort of person I guess. It definitely helped, but wasn't essential, to read "The Bean Trees" first. This was especially true because it set up the (geographic) landscape for me, a non-American. That landscape (both urban and rural) and the way it affects the people's lives is a major issue in these books, I think.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    While I didn't like this book as much as I enjoyed its prequel ('The Bean Trees'), it was nice to continue with the story of Turtle and learn a bit more about her. She gets a lot more interesting as a character in this book. I also found how I felt about the legal and emotional struggle between Turtle's adopted mother and her tribe very interesting.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A bit predictable, but good characters.