Novelist Barbara Kingsolver once wrote, "If we can't, as artists, improve on real life, we should put down our pencils and go bake bread." In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she manages to do both, applying her literary skills to a new food environment. In her seamless diary narrative, Kingsolver tells how she and her family relocated to southern Appalachia after suffering through years of drought in Arizona. The purpose of the move was The Kingsolvers sought to "live in a place that could feed us" by growing their own food and living among a community of local organic growers.