Barbara Kingsolver, of The Poisonwood Bible fame, wrote The Bean Trees about finding salvation in an ostensibly barren situation—appropriately, this low-key debut novel is set in Arizona. Taylor Greer leaves rural Kentucky to find adventure out west, and by the time she hits Tucson, she’s achieved it, having mysteriously “inherited” a Native American toddler named Turtle. Taylor becomes involved with a sanctuary for Central American refugees run by Mattie, owner of “Jesus Is Lord Used Tires,” and soon finds herself struggling to understand the conflicts she must face head-on, from immigration and divorce to her newfound daughter’s unknown past. Kingsolver, as she does in all her novels, balances heady topics with quick-witted dialogue and her ever-present wry humor.

Taylor’s Arizona neighbors, from the elegant, soft-spoken Esteban to the lovably neurotic Lou Ann, are as richly drawn as the tough-as-nails heroine herself. As Kingsolver’s characters continually find beauty in the absence of plenty, the Arizona landscape seems designed especially for them. During the desert’s periodic dry spells, the world looks “parched ... like it ached, somehow”—the only sound is a high screaming buzz of cicada mating calls. Yet, nestled among the cracked and dusty hills, are canyons with waterfalls, cottonwood trees, and flowers like the night-blooming cereus, which opens enormous buds only one night a year. Then there are the cacti—skinny saguaros whose red fruits “split open like mouths” at their crown, and the clustered ocotillos, each topped with a “flaming orange spike.”

The Arizona desert is full of life, albeit strange forms of it, just as Taylor and Turtle’s world, while possessing hardships, can also lay claim to indescribable happiness. “There were bushes and trees and weeds here, exactly the same as anywhere else,” Taylor recalls, “except that the colors were different, and everything alive had thorns.”