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A novel by Barbara Kingsolver about a small town girl named Taylor Greer who decides to drive [[TheAllegedCar her car]] [[SmallTownBoredom as far as it'll take her and settle down wherever it ends up breaking]]. Along the way she meets a Guatemalan couple and after traveling through an Indian reserve, she [[PromotionToParent gets saddled with the toddler Turtle]]. The rest of the novel deals with the relationships between her and the people in her new town as well as the details of this unexpected motherhood.

The novel eventually spawned a sequel: Literature/PigsInHeaven.
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!!This book provides examples of:

* AbusiveParents: Turtle's. When your mother is desperate enough to leave you in a car with a stranger, you know it's bad.
* ArtificialLimbs: Lou Ann's husband got a replacement foot after an accident. He then proceeds to {{wangst}} about it.
* TheAllegedCar: Taylor drives an old junker, and her plan is to drive it until it breaks down.
* CandyStriper: Taylor mentions that many of the girls in her Kentucky hometown became Candy Stripers in high school as an extracurricular activity.
* DisappearedDad: Both Lou Ann and Taylor have them: Lou Ann's is dead, and Taylor's was never there in the first place.
* {{Foil}}: Taylor and Lou Ann are this to each other, with Lou Ann being timid and sensitive and Taylor being brash and confident. They are also...
** TomboyAndGirlyGirl
%%* HandyHelper: Virgie to Edna, who is blind.
* IronicHell: Estevan describes a hell where there's a pot of delicious bubbling stew and everyone is equipped with spoons too long to feed themselves with. They could all eat if they helped each other, but being the sort of people who deserve hell, they never will.
* MandatoryMotherhood: Taylor escapes from her small town to avoid becoming pregnant....and then has a child left in her car.
* PromotionToParent: Taylor tries to give Turtle off to her other friends, but eventually admits that she's decided to raise her.
%%* SexyPriest: Father William
%%* SmallTownBoredom: The driving force of this novel.
* TeenPregnancy: The fate of most of the girls in Taylor's hometown. Taylor escapes this, [[MandatoryMotherhood only to get another person's toddler dumped onto her lap as soon as she leaves her hometown]].
* ThisIsMyNameOnForeign: Estevan and Esperanza introducing themselves as "Steven" and "Hope" to potentially avoid prejudice.
%%* ThoseTwoGuys: Edna and Virgie.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The revelation that Turtle is an underdeveloped 3-year-old rather than the 1.5-year-old everyone assumed her to be occurs a little more than halfway through the novel, and comes as a surprise to both the characters and the reader. Unless, of course, the reader read the summary on the back cover, which describes Turtle as a 3-year-old.
%%* UnresolvedSexualTension: Between Estevan and Taylor. It goes nowhere because he's still devoted to his wife.
%%* WrenchWench: Mattie.
* WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes: Taylor is quite nervous around tires after seeing a man thrown into the air by an exploding tractor tire as a child. Naturally, the only place she can find a job is Jesus Is Lord Used Tires.
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