Animal Dreams
1990
Winner of the Edward Abbey Ecofiction Prize
“Animals dream about the things they do in the day time just like people do. If you want sweet dreams, you’ve got to live a sweet life.” So says Loyd Peregrina, a handsome Apache trainman and latter-day philosopher. But when Codi Noline returns to her hometown, Loyd’s advice is painfully out of her reach. Dreamless and at the end of her rope, Codi comes back to Grace, Arizona to confront her past and face her ailing, distant father. What she finds is a town threatened by a silent environmental catastrophe, some startling clues to her own identity, and a man whose view of the world could change the course of her life. Blending flashbacks, dreams, and Native American legends, Animal Dreams is a suspenseful love story and a moving exploration of life’s largest commitments. With this work, the acclaimed author of The Bean Trees and Homeland and Other Stories sustains her familiar voice while giving readers her most remarkable book yet.
“A glorious tapestry . . . Animal Dreams is rich fodder for our own sweet, satisfying dreams.” - Denver Post
“A novel full of aching sadness—as well as joy, humor, insight and wonderful writing.” - Arizona Daily Star
“An emotional masterpiece . . . A novel in which humor, passion, and superb prose conspire to seize a reader by the heart and by the soul.” - New York Daily News
“Animal Dreams is a novel that feel closer to the truth about modern lives than anything I’ve read in a long time . . . An astonishing book that ought to put Barbara Kingsolver in the first ranks of fiction writers.” - Cosmopolitan
“Animal Dreams literally bursts with life. Its description of how one woman finds her way back from the edge of despair seems absolutely perfect . . . [It] leaves the reader filled with wonder and hope.” - Houston Post
“Barbara Kingsolver demonstrates a special gift for the vivid evocation of landscape and of her characters’ state of mind.” - New York Times Book Review
"Kingsolver achieves a fully realized and profoundly moral vision, one that is rooted in the land and our relationship to it." - San Francisco Chronicle
“Kingsolver is a writer of rare ambition and unequivocal talent . . . Animal Dreams is a complex, passionate, bravely challenging book.” - Chicago Tribune
“Kingsolver is giving a new voice to our literature. Animal Dreams solidly establishes Kingsolver as someone who will give her public more than one great book.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Kingsolver probes the human heart with uncommon wisdom. Animal Dreams is a gracefully written, large-spirited novel. Anchored on the earth, it dares to soar into the ethereal." - New York Newsday
"One of the year's best works of fiction." - Detroit News and Free Press
"Rich, complex, witty . . . This is a sweet book, full of bitter pain; a beautiful weaving of the light and the dark. This one will be with us for a long time." - Washington Post Book World