The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
by Valerie Biles

In The Bean Trees written by Barbara Kingsolver, Taylor Greer relates the parts of plants to her friends and family by saying "Everything related to beans is called a legume. But this is the most interesting part: wisteria vines, like other legumes, often thrive in poor soil. Their secret is something called rhizobia. These are microscopic bugs that live underground in little knots on the roots. . . .The rhizobia are not actually part of the plant, they are separate creatures, but they always live with legumes: a kind of underground railroad moving secretly up and down the roots. ‘It’s like this,’ I told Turtle. ‘There’s a whole invisible system for helping out the plant that you’d never guess was there.’ The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by, is how I explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they make miracles" (227).

Taylor is a lot like the wisteria vine; she has not been planted in the best of dirt and repots herself in better soil by leaving her home state of Kentucky so she can embark on a long car ride to Arizona. The rhizobia are Turtle, Lou Ann, and Mattie, the closest thing she has to a family and the secret to Taylor’s survival. Although it may appear that she is strong and can thrive on her own, it is quite the contrary. Their concern with the wellbeing Taylor of enables her to live comfortably and absorb the best from Arizona.

Taylor is known for being hardheaded, witty, and sassy but no one would expect her to be as sensitive and thoughtful as she really is on the inside. She allows her thoughtful side to show when she is around family and friends because she does not feel threatened or a need to be tough.

Her underground railroad is very similar to the Underground Railroad in the late eighteen hundreds. Both protect and offer a haven to those in need of it. Her overprotective roommate, Lou Ann, always looks out for Taylor’s safety and Mattie, her boss, is the first person to offer her a job and a place to stay when she first arrives in Tucson.

The main emphasis in this novel is put upon the similarities between plants and humans. Plant life would be nonexistent if it were not given the proper attention from the gardener or nature. A thorny plant may have a hostile appearance but on the inside, it is fragile and harmless. Without her support system, she would have soon wilted in the dry Arizona heat but her rhizobia were always at her roots to keep her nourished and alive. The combination of having people that care so much and believe in her enables Taylor to accomplish her goal of planting her own garden in foreign soil which years ago she thought it would have taken a miracle to achieve.