The Bean Trees was published by Harper & Row in 1988. Taylor Greer, a sharp-tongued young woman from rural Kentucky, buys a ‘55 Volkswagen and heads west with the sole ambition of getting away from Pittman County, where getting pregnant in high school is the expected trajectory. At a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma, a woman silently places a brutalized toddler in her car. Taylor names the child Turtle and keeps driving.
In Tucson, Taylor finds community among an improvised family of misfits: Mattie, who runs a tire shop that doubles as a sanctuary for Central American refugees; Lou Ann Ruiz, a fellow Kentuckian abandoned by her husband; and Estevan and Esperanza, Guatemalan refugees whose own child was taken by the government. The novel interweaves Taylor’s growing attachment to Turtle with the parallel stories of displacement — Cherokee, Central American, rural Appalachian — and the theme of chosen family replacing biological obligation.
Kingsolver drew on her years living in Tucson and her work with human rights organizations supporting Central American refugees. The novel was written during the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, when churches and individuals harbored refugees fleeing US-backed regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador.
Collecting The Bean Trees
First edition (Harper & Row, New York, 1988): Boards with dust jacket. Small first printing for a debut.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $200–$500
- Very good in jacket: $80–$200
- Signed first: $400–$800