The Importance Of Family In The Bean Trees

In this novel The Bean Trees the family aspect is not the traditional way of the American Dream. The “American Dream” is typically a father, mother, kids, and a house with a white picket fence. This novel shows a whole other way of being a being a family, and granted it isn't the way most people think a family should be. Taylor Greer is a teenage girl who picked up and moved from Pittman County, Kentucky. She decided to move because the “norm” there wasn't something she thought would suit her. She didn't want to be a high school drop out because of pregnancy, or fall into the business of cleaning houses like her mother, she was different in a good way. Before she began this trip her mother made her work on her car, so that in case anything were to break Taylor would know how to fix it, on this journey Taylor encountered many ups and downs, her car didn't have windows, it didn't have good MPG, and it was suit for a child. Among one of Taylor's first stops she was at a little cafe’ and when she was leaving a woman came up
This wouldn't be your typical lifestyle that you would choose for a single parent. Taylor has to be the caregiver, and the provider, which is not easy. Yet she takes on the task. The last stop on their journey is in Tucson, Arizona. They meet a woman named Lou Ann who has a son named Dwayne Ray, she is also a single parent because her husband Angle isn't a very good man and he left her. Both Lou Ann and Taylor are single parents, they decide to move in together and raise the children. The encounter many problems along the way, they have 3 friends who are always there to help, Mattie, Esperanza, and Estevan. Mattie is a doctor who looked at Turtle and found that she had been abused more than Taylor had thought, and this made life all the more difficult to raise her, and harder to accomplish being normal