Within moments of meeting, this unlikely pair embarks on a strange and profligate mating dance on the remote Appalachian peak where Deanna oversees a nature preserve. Reclusive game warden Deanna Wolfe, in search of a den of rare Appalachian coyotes, finds herself pursued by Eddie Bondo, a Wyoming bounty hunter nearly 20 years her junior. "Prodigal Summer" opens as a lovingly rendered pastoral, in which nearly every paragraph celebrates renewal and fecundity. Disturb the delicate balance of nature, and quality of life for all species degenerates. And that, of course, is Kingsolver's point: All creatures are necessary in a harmonious world. No single character - from humans to goats to black snakes to spiders - is more important than another. Though varied in size, no one plot line dominates. Interweaving three stories of rural life in a southwestern Virginia hollow, Kingsolver makes nature herself (including the humans who are but a small part of it) her novel's heroine. In "Prodigal Summer," Barbara Kingsolver offers up a remarkable triptych in which the protagonist is not a single character but an entire ecosystem.
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