Liza
I admire Barbara Kingsolver - she is able of touching the most sensitive topics - poverty, lack of education, climate change, the human damage to nature - and do it all with such a personal wonderful story. She did the same with other topics in the Posionwood Bible, and since then I decided to read as many of her books that I can find.
I fell in love with Dellarobia, found a lot of interest in the Monarch butterflies (all information is correct and it is worth visiting a site where you can see them), reminded myself of the magic of science, investigation and look at things from a different point of view. Kingsolver is an artist in telling stories from the eyes of the main character, and a bigger artist in making the reader think.