Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Barbara Kingsolver is the primary author of the book and also one of its four main characters. She is known for being a writer of fiction, as well as essays and poetry. Kingsolver received a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and she has won various other awards, including a National Humanities Medal. Her most well-known novel is The Poisonwood Bible.

Although she is not generally known for her nonfiction work, many of her novels include themes of social justice and environmental concerns, which are both important in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Throughout the book, Kingsolver reveals many facets of herself, such as her childhood in Kentucky as the daughter of farmers. As such, she has a deep respect for the farming process and has a desire to inform and educate, filling the knowledge gap that has developed as generations lost their intuitive understanding of food production. She also says that her education is in biology, giving her a depth of knowledge about natural processes, which inform the family’s experiment to “attempt to feed ourselves animals and vegetables whose provenance we really knew” (10)

She is often idealistic but also immensely practical in teaching her children how to appreciate growing their own food. She is also careful to explain the experiment from a scientific point of view, while also offering an emotional depth and reasoning as well.

Kingsolver’s second husband, Steven L. Hopp, is a primary character in the book and one of its narrators. He contributes one or two short essays per chapter, usually for the purposes of exploring a key issue mentioned in Kingsolver’s narrative. By profession, he is an ornithologist whose “research interest is bioacoustics: birdsong and other animal communication” (182).

Also raised by farmers, he had purchased the farm the family eventually moved to in Virginia as a young man, 20 years prior to the start of the story. He shares Kingsolver’s commitment to sustainability, and is the founder and director of Meadowview, Virginia, Farmers Guild. He also teaches environmental science at Emory and Henry College.

Throughout the story, Hopp is a stalwart and supportive presence who works in tandem with Kingsolver to make their experiment a reality. Both parents also work with both girls to instill in them respect for farming and the environment. 

Kingsolver’s eldest daughter from her first marriage is Camille, who is one of the four main characters, as well as the third and final narrator. She generally contributes an essay at the end of each chapter, giving a young person’s perspective on the issues raised in the previous writing. Since one of Kingsolver’s main points is that irresponsible eating is harmful to the next generation, it is appropriate that Camille brings her voice as part of that generation to the table. In Kingsolver’s words: “from a biological perspective, the ultimate act of failure is to raise helpless kids” (324).

She shares her parents’ commitment to the environment. In fact, she was the one who “told my parents I would never eat beef from a feedlot again. Surprisingly, they agreed and took the same vow” (238).

Camille generally includes recipes with her essays, and appears throughout the story as one of the main cooks of the family. The recipes encourage actionable steps in an easy, non-confrontational way. Camille also leaves for college six months into the experiment, and so gives an account of attempting to continue to be a locavore while on a college campus.