Rating: PG-13 - there's a few sexual references/sex related humor, but I would consider it extremely mild, and definitely not memorable.
Pages: 261
Summary:Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity for putting down roots. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in apparently empty places.
My Thoughts: I absolutely love this book. I read it for the first time in middle school, again in high school, and again now. One of the big perks to this book is that it's not centered on love, heartbreak, or random teenage drama. It's a real story of a person trying to get by in life. Taylor has a personality that is rather unforgettable, and all the people she meets in the story are pretty similar.
Basically, Taylor (who changed her name to Taylor from Marietta) is tired of Kentucky and decides to get out. She opts to drive her car as far as it will take her, but gives up that idea when her car breaks down in boring, flat Oklahoma. While in Oklahoma getting her car fixed, Taylor aquires a child. An Indian woman simply leaves the girl on Taylor's passenger seat. With nowhere to go really, Taylor takes the kid with her. She names her Turtle because she has a vice-like grip that reminds Taylor of mud-turtles. Eventually, Taylor ends up in Tucson, Arizona, where she finds housing with a woman named Lou-Ann, who recently had a baby, and whose husband just left her.
There are two directions the story goes from here. First, Taylor decides she wants Turtle to belong to her legally, but with no documentation, this proves rather difficult. Most of the second half of the story encompasses Taylor's struggle to adopt Turtle. Underneath all that is a story about illegal immigration. Taylor has a friend in Tucson who is in the business of helping illegal immigrants get into the country and find places where they will be safe. Mostly, these people fled their country in the south because they would have been killed otherwise. It's kind of the second story line going on. Now that I've read a few of Kingsolver's books, I'm beginning to think that the theme of her books always has something to do with a controversial issue involving the United States and our involvement with foreigners. But regardless of the commentary on immigration, I LOVE the book, and I think it's a fantastic story.
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