Pigs in Heaven * Barbara Kingsolver * Greer Family #2

When an intuitive six-year-old girl witnesses a freak accident at the Hoover Dam, her sudden nationwide celebrity inadvertently alerts a Cherokee activist lawyer who realizes the child's informal adoption was illegal, igniting an emotional, cross-country battle for custody.

The Story: Written by prominent, critically acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver, this beautifully composed 1993 masterpiece serves as the definitive sequel to her hit debut novel, The Bean Trees. Step-by-step, the narrative unfolds an intricate multi-perspective storyline that avoids simple moral choices. Instead, Kingsolver shapes a deeply compassionate narrative exploring the complex relationship between a dedicated single mother and her fiercely guarded child, contrasting personal family bonds with the sovereign cultural preservation rights of tribal communities.

The plot returns to Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee daughter, Turtle, who have carved out a happy life in Tucson, Arizona. Their stable world shifts during a vacation trip when Turtle's sharp sight alerts rescuers to a man trapped inside the structural walls of the Hoover Dam. This brief moment of heroic media attention spreads across television screens, catching the eye of Annawake Fourkiller, a brilliant and determined attorney for the Cherokee Nation. Annawake recognizes Turtle as a missing tribal youth who was traumatized and abandoned years prior, quickly launching an official custody investigation to return the child to her ancestral people in Heaven, Oklahoma.

Terrified of losing her daughter, Taylor takes Turtle on the lam, fleeing across the Southwest while facing systemic financial fatigue and emotional exhaustion. Meanwhile, the plot gains brilliant perspective through Taylor's mother, Alice Greer, who travels directly into the heart of the Cherokee Nation to research the family's past. Alice's interactions with Cash Stillwater, Turtle's only surviving blood relative, pave the way for a unique, restorative compromise that patches together the broken fragments of everyone's history. Published as a major hardcover hit by HarperCollins, this award-winning, chart-topping milestone remains an essential showcase piece for contemporary literature shelves.

Perfect For: Devotees of character-driven family chronicles, modern social commentaries, and Native American literature like the works of Louise Erdrich, Amy Tan, or Alice Walker; readers continuing Taylor Greer's literary journey; and book clubs analyzing complex legal, ethical, and cultural concepts surrounding family definitions.

Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (1993).

Published 1993 by HarperCollins, stated First Edition.

Fiction / Literature / Contemporary Fiction / Family Sagas / Native American Cultural Dramas / Rural Americana / Bestselling Literary Novels