Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

Codi returns to her hometown to confront her past and face her ailing father. What she finds is a town threatened by an environmental catastrophe and a man who could change her life.

This book was published in 1990, but the audiobook version I listened to was recorded by Kingsolver herself in 2018. My initial reaction was that she should have gotten a professional narrator, but within the first hour, I changed my mind. Her voice in this story is so personal and she allows the emotion to come out in the narration. I felt it added an additional layer of meaning to the text, which is already a treasure. While I know that people are very focused on reading contemporary texts or older classic texts, don't sleep on this one. It is wonderful, gentle, and both sad and inspiring.

Although I enjoyed this book, and sympathized with its message, even I found it heavy-handed. It's absolutely right about the criminal support the U.S. provided to the Contras, and it's right about environmental horrors committed by corporate America, and it's right about animal cruelty, and it's right the treatment of Native Americans by the white settlers, but all of that overwhelms the STORY, which is a nice (if occasionally sappy) story about a woman who learns to love.

A touch heavyhanded, but lovely nonetheless and unmistakably Kingsolver. I'm still not sure it's worth reading on its own merits, though. What I most enjoyed was discovering Kingsolver's early voice.