Barbara Kingsolver · 1988 · road

Kingsolver's first novel. A young woman drives out of rural Kentucky in a car with no starter, meaning to keep going until it stops - and somewhere in Oklahoma a stranger puts an abandoned Cherokee toddler into the passenger seat. The car stops in Tucson, and the rest of the book is about who takes them in.

1. 1
   Pittman

   A poor town in eastern Kentucky where the great ambition is to get out before you are pregnant - and Marietta Greer manages it, buys a 1955 Volkswagen with no starter, renames herself Taylor and drives west.

2. 2
   The Cherokee Nation

   Somewhere in Oklahoma a woman puts a three-year-old into her car outside a bar and walks away - and Taylor drives on with a silent, bruised Cherokee child she names Turtle for the way she holds on.

3. 3
   Tucson

   Two flat tyres end the journey in Arizona, which is as far as the money goes - and the book becomes about the people who take her in: a tyre shop run by a woman, and two Guatemalan refugees living in a church.

4. 4
   Oklahoma

   Back east at the end with the refugees hidden in the car and an adoption to arrange that requires a lie in a lawyer's office - and Kingsolver ties sanctuary, adoption and the Cherokee Nation into the same knot.