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 story of a Chinese peasant and his passionate, dogged accumulation of land during famine, drought, and revolution.

Simple rhyming text describes a child's day spent riding on the tractor with Daddy at their small farm.

After the death of his parents, Jim was sent to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk Nebraska. There he befriended Antonia, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. Years later, Jim, now a successful lawyer in New York, returns to his childhood home and Antonia. Jim's love for Antonia has endured, much as she herself has endured tragic circumstances.

A Swiss orphan is heartbroken when she must leave her beloved grandfather and their happy home in the mountains to go to school and to care for an invalid girl in the city.

Although McGillicuddy the kangaroo cannot produce wool or milk or lay eggs, the other animals learn that kangaroos can bring special skills to the farm.

Socialite Nora MacKenzie, alone and penniless after her husband's suicide, tries to hold on to her dignity by working her mountainside farm, the one property she has managed to keep, and when the Vermont locals refuse to take her seriously she finds an ally in Charles "C. W." Walker, a gentle, hardworking man who teaches her what she needs to know about farming and about love.

Fern is a young farm girl who rescues the runt, Wilbur. Wilbur the pig is saved from certain death and Fern visits him every day at her Uncle Homer's farm. But it's Wilbur's friendship with Charlotte the spider that ultimately saves him from the "smoke house." Charlotte's talent for weaving praiseworthy words about Wilbur into her web turns the Zuckerman farm into a tourist attraction.

When a big new yellow tractor arrives, Otis the friendly little tractor is cast away behind the barn, but when trouble occurs Otis is the only one who can help.

All week long the pigs help out around the farm in unexpected ways.