ANIMAL DREAMS by Barbara Kingsolver

It’s the 1980s in Arizona.  Codi, a med school dropout, and her sister Hallie have been very close their entire lives, but now Hallie has gone to Nicaragua to provide agricultural expertise.  It’s a very dangerous time there, with the Contra rebellion in full force.  Codi is at loose ends, and since her father is suffering from dementia, she decides to return to her hometown of Grace, Arizona, to teach Biology at the local high school.  When she was fifteen, Codi became pregnant and miscarried, and now she re-encounters the father of her lost child.  Loyd Peregrina is an Apache who works for the railroad and indulges in cockfighting on the side.  He would seem an odd match for Codi, but their rekindled relationship blossoms, despite their obvious differences.  As usual, Kingsolver weaves a social issue into her plot, and this time, in addition to the Nicaraguan controversy surrounding the U.S. backing of the right-wing Contras, Codi discovers that industrial pollution is poisoning the local river and killing her town’s orchards.  Personally, it would never occur to me that there would be orchards in Arizona, but no matter.  The author’s always luminous prose, lively dialog, winsome characters, and a plot in which Code comes to evaluate what she hopes for in life make reading Kingsolver’s books a delight and a privilege.