by Barbara Kingsolver

Bom in 1955 in Annapolis, Maryland, Barbara Kingsolver later settled in Tucson, Arizona, attended graduate school, and worked at the university there. Eventually she married and had a daughter, Camille-real-life experience for the fictional mother-daughter relationship created in her first novel, The Bean Trees. Prior to its writing, Kingsolver worked as a freelance journalist and before that as a technical writer. Her novels portray an especial sensitivity to everyday Americans-the shopowners, the unemployed, the single parent fighting to survive-and expose the strength that can be gained by their mutual support of one another.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

Guatemalan refugees. The Bean Trees examines, in part, the lives and fates of a pair of young Guatemalan refugees, Estevan and Esperanza, who benefit from a sanctuary run secretly from Tucson, Arizona, to help them and other Central Americans avoid...