“Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” – Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver is one of my tried-and-true, go-to authors. From the first time I picked up a copy of The Bean Trees in the 1950s-bowling-alley-turned-Barnes-and-Noble in downtown Bellevue, I knew I would like it. Originally, it was the cover art and fluorescent orange spine that made me pick up the book, but after I bought it and actually read it, I knew I was under the spell of this author. Although the eccentricity of a blind babysitter named Edna Poppy and a shop called Jesus is Lord Used Tires stood out to this 17-year-old, what I really enjoyed was Kingsolver’s ability to show me other sides to issues and situations that I didn’t know much about, such as underground railroads for immigrants and rural Appalachian towns. It was all very eye opening, yet in a quirky-character-driven sort of way. But as much as I love to read Barbara Kingsolver, I’d also argue that her novels sometimes lean toward the pedantic and heavy-handed side; she may write sympathetic characters for both sides of an issue, but at times, they turn into caricatures of themselves.