Homeland

Homeland follows Gloria's family and her great-grandmother Green Leaf, a Cherokee woman from the Hiwassee Valley in Tennessee. Green Leaf left home with a man on a stolen horse and belonged to fugitive bands who resisted capture. Decades later, her family takes Great Mam on a road trip home. The land that keeps her ancestors' scattered bones no longer matches what she remembers. The story joins past, present and future to explore home, memory, clan law and return. It asks what it means to go back to a changed place.

Why You Should Read?

• Follow Gloria's family as they take Great Mam on a road trip back to her old home.
• Meet Green Leaf, a Cherokee woman who left the Hiwassee Valley with a man on a stolen horse.
• Explore the history of fugitive Cherokee bands who resisted capture and lived away from their home.
• Understand how past, present and future connect when a family returns to a place changed by time.

About the Author

Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955, and is an American writer of novels, essays, and poems. Her books include The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which describes her family trying to eat locally. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Demon Copperhead. Her subjects often include social justice, biodiversity, and how people relate to their communities and environments. At DePauw University and the University of Arizona, she studied biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Before writing novels, she worked as a freelance writer. She founded the Bellwether Prize in 2000, which supports writing for social change.