`Prodigal Summer,' by Barbara Kingsolver; HarperCollins (444 pages, $26).

Byline: Nancy Pate

Having ventured into the heart of the Congo in her last novel, "The Poisonwood Bible," Barbara Kingsolver makes a triumphant return to the southern Appalachians of her own childhood in the appropriately titled "Prodigal Summer."

With the consummate skill of a born storyteller, Kingsolver generously offers readers three novels in one, intertwining the lives of a handful of people living in and around Zebulon Valley, a verdant "wrinkle in the map that lies between farms and wildness." The characters' links to one another become obvious during the course of the book, but more important is the connection that they all come to feel with the natural world, its innate …