SOURCE: “Time, Space, and Heartbeats,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 9, 1990, pp. 1, 15.

In the following review, Randall offers praise for Animal Dreams.

When Barbara Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees, appeared in 1988, it was deeply moving and also highly successful: a book that addressed a difficult subject matter with delicious humor, yet never trivialized the issues. Readers laughed out loud through page after page, then realized they had just acquired a new understanding of childhood sexual abuse and the grass-roots movement providing sanctuary to those who flee the war zones in Central America.

That book gained an immediate audience for this new writer from Kentucky by way of Arizona. Kingsolver didn't keep her fans waiting long for the next book. She promptly followed The Bean Trees with the well-received Homeland and Other Stories and a piece of nonfiction. Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine...