SOURCE: “Loving, Nourishing as a Way of Life,” in Chicago Tribune, May 18, 1988, p. 3.

In the following review, Kleiman offers positive assessment of The Bean Trees.

Barbara Kingsolver's first novel is a quietly building, powerfully moving story about a mother's fierce love for her daughter, even if she isn't legally the mother and the child literally was dumped in her car, and even if the mother pretends for the longest time that the little girl isn't of paramount importance.

Taylor Greer, out to conquer the world, leaves her own mother in rural Kentucky, happy to get away and proud that she was one of the few girls in her class who “stayed out of trouble” and finished high school.

“This is not to say that I was unfamiliar with the back seat of a Chevrolet, … but Mamma always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. … Believe me, in...