The wedding of a daughter's best friend and--a year later--the wedding of a daughter brings Griffin back to Cape Cod, his childhood home, where he confronts old hurts, the loss of his father, and more of his own troubles.

Cassie Barrett, a victim of abuse at the hands of her movie star spouse Alex, takes refuge with the parents of Native American cop Will Flying Horse to await the birth of her child and gather enough strength to publicly renounce her husband.

Rose McKenna works as a volunteer at her daughter Melly's school, hoping to keep an eye on Amanda, the girl who has been bullying Melly, but when an explosion throws the school into chaos, Rose must chose between saving her daughter and saving Amanda, and her decision threatens to destroy all their lives.

Hyacinth's idyllic marriage ends in divorce and she loses custody of her children when, in an act of jealousy, she burns her husband's office building to the ground, killing a worker.

Wilson Lewis, forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage after thirty years, and realizing his responsibility for that loss, embarks on a mission to make his wife fall in love with him all over again.

Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily...

The Walker clan, Vivi and Big Shep; their children Sidda, Little Shep, Lulu, and Baylor; Vivi's long-time girlfriends the Ya-Yas; and neighbors Cheney and Willetta, live out their lives in flamboyant and secretive style in the bayou of Thorton, Louisiana.