Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

By: Barbara Kingsolver

Well-known novelist Barbara Kingsolver takes us on a different journey in her memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver and her husband and two daughters move from their Tucson, Arizona home of many years to a farmhouse in the southern Appalachians. One of the main reasons for their relocation was their desire to live in a place that could sustain them. The family decided to spend the following year trying to the best of their ability to grow everything that they eat and if they can’t, buy it only from a local farmer.

The concept may seem foreign to most of us living in the modern food system, but really it is the most basic form of healthful living: understanding where all of your food and water comes from and eating a seasonal diet based on locally supplied vegetables and meats. For gardeners this book is educational as well as entertaining because Kingsolver’s expert gardening abilities play a major role in the family’s ability to survive off the land. If anything, this book will help to open your mind to exactly where the food you eat comes from and to begin to think about what the costs are to the environment and your body from food that comes from far away.

This book will be discussed on Tuesday, February 9, Noon to 1 pm as part of the Scott Arboretum’s Nature’s Narratives Book Discussion Group. Also check out the other must-reads as part of this group!