I don't expect to see perfection before I die. Lord, if I did I would have stuck my head in the oven back in Tucson, after hearing the stories of some of those refugees. What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, "What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

Although the setting of the novel is somewhat similar to Kingsolver's own childhood trip to the then Republic of Congo the novel is not autobiographical. Her major non-fiction works include her 1990 publication Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983 and 2007's Animal Vegetable Miracle a description of eating locally. "


Local eating experiment
Starting in April 2005 Kingsolver and her family spent a year making every effort to eat food produced as locally as possible.

In 2000 Kingsolver establiBarbara Kingsolverd the Bellwether Prize to support "literature of social change. Kingsolver has received numerous awards including the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Richard C. Each of her books publiBarbara Kingsolverd since 1993 has been on the New York Times Best Seller list.