Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain.

Naturally, our first stop was to buy junk food and fossil fuel. . . .

Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center of the American diet.

This is the story of a year in which we made every attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew . . . and of how our family was changed by our first year of deliberately eating food produced from the same place where we worked, went to school, loved our neighbors, drank the water, and breathed the air.

The National Humanities Medal-winning author of The Poisonwood Bible follows the author's family's efforts to live on locally and home-grown foods, an endeavor through which they learned lighthearted truths about food production and the connection between health and diet. Reprint. 250,000 first printing.

Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life—vowing that, for one year, they’d only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

Called home — Waiting for asparagus: late March — Springing forward — Stalking the vegetannual — Molly mooching: April — The birds and the bees — Gratitude: May — Growing trust: mid-June — Six impossible things before breakfast: late June — Eating neighborly: late June — Slow food nations: late June — Zucchini larceny: July — Life in a red state: August — You can't run away on harvest day: September — Where fish wear crowns: September — Smashing pumpkins: October — Celebration days: November-December — What do you eat in January? — Hungry month: February-March — Time begins.