In taking a fresh look at the Solomonic dilemma of choosing between two equally valid claims on a child's life, Kingsolver achieves the admirable feat of making the reader understand and sympathize with both sides of the controversy, as she contrasts Taylor's inalterable mother's love with Annawake's determination to save Turtle from the stigmatization she can expect from white society. Taylor reacts by fleeing her Tucson home with Turtle to begin a precarious existence on the road skirting the edge of poverty and despair, she eventually realizes that Turtle has become emotionally unmoored. Now six years old and still bearing psychological marks of the abuse that occured before she was rescued by Taylor, Turtle is discovered by formidable Indian lawyer Annawake Fourkiller, who insists that the child be returned to the Cherokee Nation. She acknowledges that this might not do Turtle much good, but it is the continuity of the tribe that is at stake.Taylor Greer and her adopted Cherokee daughter Turtle, first met in The Bean Trees, will captivate readers anew in Kingsolver's assured and eloquent sequel, which mixes wit, wisdom and the expert skills of a born raconteur into a powerfully affecting narrative. One of their hot-shot young lawyers wants Turtle back. Yet although Taylor legally adopted Turtle, according to Cherokee law she did no such thing. She was given to Taylor a few years earlier by a drunken mother fearful of what her husband might to do to the little baby (he had already abused her).
Six-year-old Turtle is Cherokee by birth. Mother and daughter go to Heaven because they aren't, in fact, mother and daughter. For one thing, people hardened by time begin to wonder whether avoiding life is any better than getting kicked by it. But while this might not be the eerie yonder, strange things still happen there. In her new novel a mother is forced by her daughter (Taylor and Turtle, respectively) to go to Heaven, Oklahoma, deep in Cherokee country. In one of the stories in her 1989 collection, Homeland, a mother is begged by her daughter to take her to the decidedly earthbound Ice Cream Heaven. HEAVEN is an easy place to get to in Barbara Kingsolver's work.
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