The Bean Tree

The Bean Tree

Taylor Greer has many trials and tribulations that she must

confront and overcome. This essay is going to discuss Taylor's

trials and tribulations within the novel. Taylor (born Marietta) grew up in Pittman, Kentucky, a small rural town where families "had kids just about as fast as they could fall down the well and drown" and a boy with a job as a gas-meter man was considered a "high-class catch." She needs to get out to get ahead and to avoid pregnancy. She succeeds on both accounts when she buys a '55 Volkswagen and heads west. She leaves almost everything behind, including her name (Taylor is the name she adopts when she runs out of gas in Taylorville, Illinois). When her steering fails somewhere in central Oklahoma, in a country owned by the Cherokee nation, she stops for repairs at a roadside service station. A Cherokee woman looks at Taylor and sees a chance for her dead sister's child to escape a life of abuse and alcoholism. She hands the child over to Taylor and disappears. Taylor's journey of self-discovery suddenly becomes a transition into a relationship where she is not the most important person.

Taylor and her adopted child, Turtle travel to Tucson, Arizona, where more car troubles land them at a shop known as Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. The owner of this odd establishment is a woman named Mattie, a serene, big-hearted soul who shelters political refugees from Guatemala, and who gives Taylor a much needed job. Taylor and Turtle find a room with Lou Ann Ruiz, a self-described "ordinary Kentuckian a long way from home," and her newborn baby Dwayne Ray. The relationship between these two single mothers, one never married, one divorcing, and their relationships with the people around them are the focus of the ...