Barbara Kingsolver has a new novel “Partita,” which was published in early October. This is great news for readers around the world, but especially in the Tri-Cities region since the Pulitzer Prize-winning author lives in Washington County, Virginia.
As the publicity blurb for “Partita” says, “It is the story of a passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty.”
Livia Cable has made peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in rural East Tennessee where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.
Shifting between past and present, Cable’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.
Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky, earned degrees in biology of DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, and the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. She has traveled throughout the world as a researcher and journalist and lived for nearly two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to Southwest Virginia in 2004.
Her books, in order of publication, are: “The Bean Trees” (1988), “Homeland” (1989), “Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike” (1989), “Animal Dreams” (1990), “Another America” (1992), “Pigs in Heaven” (1983), “High Tide in Tucson” (1995), “The Poisonwood Bible” (1998), “Prodigal Summer” (2000), “Small Wonder” (2002), “Last Stand: America’s ‘Virgin Lands,’ with photographer Annie Griffiths Belt (2002), “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” (2007), “The Lacuna” (2009), “Flight Behavior” (2012), “Unsheltered (2018), “How to Fly (In 10,000 Easy Lessons)” (2020), “Demon Copperhead” (2022), “Coyote’s Wild Home” (2023) and “Partita” (2026).
Kingsolver has served as editor for Best American Short Stories 2001. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages and have been adopted into the core literature curriculum in high schools and colleges throughout the nation. She has contributed to more than 50 literary anthologies, and her reviews and articles have appeared in many major U.S. newspapers and magazines.
“Demon Copperhead” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was named the Best Book of the 21st Century by a New York Times readers’ poll. Other honors for her work include the National Humanities Medal in 2000 and multiple awards from the American Booksellers Association and the Americal Library Association. Two of Kingsolver’s books have been Oprah Book Club picks, and she is the only two-time winner of Britain’s prestigious Women’s Prize (formerly known as the Orange Prize). She was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.
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