The Bean Trees: Lessons in Life "Our paths never would have met if it weren't for a bent rocker arm." Such chance meetings are often the very events that turn a person's world upside down and set it on an entirely new course. Taylor Greer, plainclothes heroine of Barbara Kingsolver'sfirst novel The Bean Trees (copyright 1988. 232 pages. Softcover, HarperPerennial. $11.00), leaves home to look for abetter life, and has motherhood dropped in her lap at a roadside service station.Taylor (born Marietta) grew up in Pittman, Kentucky, a small rural town where families "had kids just about as fast as theycould fall down the well and drown," and a boy with a job as a gas-meter man was considered a "high-class catch." She needsto get out to get ahead, and when she goes, she leaves almost everything behind, including her name. (Taylor is the name sheadopts when she runs out of gas in Taylorville, Illinois.) When her steering fails somewhere in central Oklahoma, in countryowned by the Cherokee nation, she stops for repairs at a roadside service station. A Cherokee woman looks at Taylor andsees a chance for her dead sister's child to escape a life of abuse and alcoholism. She hands the child over to Taylor anddisappears. Taylor's journey of self-discovery suddenly becomes a transition into a relationship where she is not the mostimportant person.Taylor and her adopted child, Turtle, travel to Tucson, Arizona, where more car troubles land them at a shop known as Jesus IsLord Used Tires. The owner of this odd establishment is a woman named Mattie, a serene, big-hearted soul who shelterspolitical refugees from Guatemala, and who gives Taylor a job. Taylor and Turtle find a room with Lou Ann Ruiz, aself-described "ordinary Kentuckian a long way from home," and her newborn baby Dwayne Ray. The relationship betweenthese two single mothers, one never married, one divorcing, and their relationships with the people around them are the focus ofthe story. T...
