Daughters

Kingsolver writes about her experiences raising her daughters, but only names Lily in "Lily's Chickens." In "Setting Free the Crabs," one of her daughters at ten years old finds a gorgeous bright orange conch on Sansible Island, and discovers there is a hermit crab still living in it. She must decide whether she takes the shell from the crab to add it to her collection, or whether she lets the crab keep it. In the end, despite her grandmother's suggestion to keep the shell, she chucks it back into the ocean. Kingsolver poses her daughter's ethical dilemma as the sort of love of nature that humans contend with. Love of nature can be freely giving, but also possessive. In this case, the desire to possess the shell was not outweighed by the desire to see the crab thrive in its natural habitat.

Kingsolver writes about Lily in...