In the following positive review, Shapiro provides a thematic analysis o/Pigs in Heaven.

Turtle Greer, 6 years old, with a lifetime of memories her adoptive mother can only guess at, got her name from the way she holds on. She has a grip like a clamp, and when she clutches Taylor's hand, or her hair, or her sleeve, there's no dislodging those fingers. Turtle was shoved into Taylor's car three years earlier while she was parked by a highway in Oklahoma. Later, Taylor saw that the little Cherokee girl had been beaten and abused. "This child is the miracle Taylor wouldn't let in the door if it had knocked," writes Barbara Kingsolver in her fine new novel Pigs in Heaven. "But that's what miracles are, she supposes. The things nobody saw coming."

Pigs in Heaven is full of miracles, especially the kind that start out—like Turtle's...