Each of her books published since 1993 have been on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally.

Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. 'The Lacuna' is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.īarbara Kingsolver is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist-and of art itself. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach-the lacuna-between truth and public presumption. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. 'The Lacuna' is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.īorn in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico-from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City-Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J.

Kingsolver the lacuna