This morning I was thinking about Barbara Kingsolver, noting that it has been quite a while since the publication of her last book, Small Worlds:Essays. I searched on the Web and through several databases to see if I could find any news about what she's working on now, but I came up empty-handed. Her website is silent on the matter.

I had never read anything by her until The Poisonwood Bible several years ago. The clarity of her vision and the power of her writing shook me up for quite awhile. I had no idea she was so masterful, so in control. I read The Prodigal Summer while in the Adirondacks on vacation in 2002. While sitting on the tree-enshrouded deck of our cabin high above Lake Minerva, I imagined myself in the world of Deanna Wolfe, the wildlife biologist, living in her tucked-away cabin on the upper slope of a mountain in the Appalachian range in Kentucky, tracking the elusive coyote. I suppose it's only natural that Prodigal Summer didn't get anywhere near the stellar reviews that The Poisonwood Bible got (after all, it's a tough road for any artist's work that follows a masterpiece), but it's well-crafted, highly entertaining, and worthy of merit.

So what is Kingsolver up to these days? If you know, give a holler. My comments system has been down since Blogspeak has been taken over by Haloscan. I'll be up and running with it soon. In the meantime, there's always e-mail.