East Tennessean

Issue date: 2/23/09 Section: The Scene

Media Credit: Michele Gourley Best-selling author Kingsolver's novel "Animal, Vegtable, Miracle" offers a narrative and a new outlook on farm life. [Click to enlarge]

"We had come to the farmland to eat deliberately," Kingsolver states in her book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life." Though the concept of her book, a family's desire to live off the land, isn't new, her approach is as fresh as the vegetables which she picks from her garden.
Wanting to live in a place where food and water are not hauled into the city at the expense of gallons of petroleum or miles of pipeline, Kingsolver, a best-selling author, and her family decide to move from their home in Tucson to a rural farm in Southwest Virginia.
Their purpose? To grow or purchase locally everything they will need to survive for an entire year. In addition to adhering to their commitment to the land, this means they will also forgo sodas, snack foods, tropical fruits and many of the items that comprise the typical American diet.
The chapters, organized chronologically, carry humorous titles such as "Six Impossible Things before Breakfast" and "Zucchini Larceny," as Kingsolver leads us through a cornucopia of anecdotes surrounding the process of farm life. She teaches us about growing asparagus, handling an overly bountiful harvest of squash and raising her first flock of turkeys.
In the midst of culling peas, canning tomatoes and creating home cooked meals, Kingsolver manages to tastefully interject facts about nutrition and the process of how food gets from farm to family.
Accompanying Kingsolver's narrative are her husband Scott's in-depth perspective about topics such as food policy, pesticide use and large-scale animal production, and her teenage daughter Camille's recipes and confessions of a self-proclaimed "veggie hog."
Though a veritable plethora of facts about food, nutrition and farming fill the pages of Kingsolver's book, it doesn't read like a stale textbook. Rather, each chapter is a story within itself and the end leaves one wishing for another taste of this idyllic life that Kingsolver and her family has created.
If you're looking for something new to read and wondering if there is more to what we eat than a bun, a burger and a cardboard box, then "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life" won't disappoint you.

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