Barbara Kingsolver is among the very most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary authors, not just of Appalachia, but of America. Among her many honors is the United Kingdom's Orange Prize in fiction for the outstanding book, world-wide, in the English language!. Kingsolver grew up in Carlisle, Kentucky, where her father was the town doctor. The multi-talented Kingsolver attended DePauw Uiversity on a music scholarship, but ended up majoring in biology. After earning a masters in ecology at the University of Arizona, she became first a science writer and then a novelist. At a speaking engagement at little Emory & Henry College in Southwest Virginia, she met her current husband, a professor there, and she still lives nearby. My favorite story in this collection is the one set in Cherokee, North Carolina, which I think captures the tourist experience there in a telling and entertaining way.
New York: HarperCollins, 1989. 244 pages. Trade paperback.