Summer Reading List Includes Barbara Kingsolver's ('77) Small Wonder

June 23, 2003

June 23, 2003, Greencastle, Ind. - "You may not find Barbara Kingsolver on the shelves at your closest religious bookstore, but anyone who's familiar with Kingsolver's work knows that spirituality threads its way through much of her prose," writes Kristen Campbell of the Religion News Service in a nationally syndicated "sampler of recently published books with spiritual and religious themes certain to fill the idle hours of summer." One of the books highlighted in piece is Small Wonder, which Kingsolver, a 1977 graduate of DePauw University, released last year.

"This 267-page text... has now been released in paperback," Campbell continues. "The book is a series of essays that Kingsolver began writing September 12, 2001." Kingsolver writes, "Sometimes writing seemed to be all that kept me from falling apart in the face of so much death and anguish, the one alternative to weeping without cease ... This is a collection of essays about who we seem to be, what remains for us to live for, and what I believe we could make of ourselves."

The article concludes, "Kingsolver's essays are challenging, not exactly the stuff of fluff that generally sits next to sand castles on a hot afternoon. But the merit of reading Kingsolver when you're away from the humdrum of your daily activities is that you may be more willing to consider what might be, and how you might act when you return to your previously scheduled life."

Small Wonder is also #2 this week in the Chronicle of Higher Education's listing of "What They're Reading on College Campuses."

You can read the article in the online version of California's Contra Costa Times by clicking here. Learn more about Small Wonder in this previous story. Barbara Kingsolver is also the author of such best-selling novels as The Bean Trees, The Poisonwood Bible, and Prodigal Summer.

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