The book we have chosen for A Book Grows in Topsfield is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This title was chosen due to the importance and timeliness of Kingsolver’s subject–sustainable living, supporting local agriculture and local businesses, eating healthfully–and the relevance of her subject to Topsfield’s own history as a primarily agricultural community. Copies of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are already circulating through the community and there is a large number available for checkout at the Library. Here is a description of the book from Publishers Weekly:
“Novelist Kingsolver recounts a year spent eating food that was home grown
or, if not that, locally grown. Accomplished gardeners, the Kingsolver
clan grow a large garden in southern Appalachia and spend summers “putting
food by” as the classic kitchen title goes. They make pickles, chutney, and mozzarella; they jar tomatoes, braid garlic and stuff turkey sausage. Nine-year old Lily runs a heritage poultry business, selling eggs and meat. What they don’t raise (lamb, beef, apples) comes from local farms. Come winter, they feast on root crops, and canned goods, menus slouching towards asparagus. Along the way, the family, having given up industrial meat years before, abandons its vegetarian ways and discovers the pleasures of conscientious canivory.”
