The Meaning of "The Bean Trees" Title

The meaning of the title of the book "The Bean Trees" is not fully revealed and explained until the very end of the book. However the explanation of the title is dependent on events that occur in the middle of the book. There is a park near Taylor and Lou Ann's house called Roosevelt Park. It is quite a barren wasteland as parks go, almost all the grass is dead, and few trees grow there. However, there is one corner of the park where a trellis stands, and crawling all over this trellis are vines. At first these vines appear as dead as the rest of the park, but, later on, they blossom into beautiful flowers that create a shady purple oasis. Even later in the book, the trees grow beans, which surprised Taylor. At the end of the book, when Taylor and Turtle are in the Oklahoma City Library, they look through a horticultural encyclopedia. As they flip through the pages, young Turtle points out a picture of the vine that they had both seen growing on the park trellis. As they read about the plant, a few particular facts stuck out at them. They discovered that the vines (called wisteria) thrive in harsh, arid climates due to separate creatures known as rhizobia. This is how Taylor explained this fact to her newly adopted daughter Turtle: "it's just the same as with people. The way Edna has Virgie...and Sandi has Kid Central Station, and everybody has Mattie." So the connection between these wisteria bean "trees" and the overall story is that during the story Taylor sees and experiences people helping other people in difficult situations, so they can survive, just like the wisteria and the rhizobia. That is the meaning of "The Bean Trees" title.

-Cory Partridge