Little Big Girl

By R.Z. Sheppard

TITLE: PIGS IN HEAVEN

AUTHOR: BARBARA KINGSOLVER

PUBLISHER: HARPERCOLLINS; 343 PAGES; $22

THE BOTTOM LINE: An on-the-road novel picks up some delightful characters while avoiding culture clash.

Heaven in the title of Barbara Kingsolver's new novel is not paradise but a small town in Oklahoma, probably not far from where the Cherokee infant girl was abandoned in Taylor Greer's car in Kingsolver's first novel, The Bean Trees.

Pigs in Heaven picks up five years later. Taylor and the baby, whom she has adopted and named Turtle, are admiring the WPA sculpture at Hoover Dam, when the child spots a man tumbling into a spillway. In keeping with Kingsolver's fictional line of determined women, the tot convinces the authorities that she did not imagine the incident. A search turns up a man with only an ankle injury. Turtle becomes a hero and a participant on an Oprah Winfrey show about kids who save people's lives. She is seen by millions, including Annawake Fourkiller, an Oklahoma lawyer dedicated to annulling Anglo adoptions of Indian children.

Kingsolver, who grew up in Kentucky, combines a folksy delivery with gentle pokes at America's media-driven culture. This neoregionalism is fresh and trendy, like fizzy springwater sold in bottles. But don't expect a kick.

Having set up a promising plot, Kingsolver succumbs to her talent for winsome characterization. Taylor's plucky mother leaves an uncommunicative new husband so devoted to silence that he sprays WD-40 on anything that squeaks. ( Taylor's boyfriend, Jax Thibodeaux, got his first name from his mother's favorite brand of New Orleans beer. Barbie, a waitress-entertainer, blithely forges $20 bills on a copy machine. Even the formidable Ms. Fourkiller has a high sweetheart quotient.

Home, family and tribe are central to Pigs. But it is also an on-the-road novel. Taylor's old Dodge covers a lot of territory as Kingsolver guides her story to a middle ground between Tom Robbins' potty detachment and Louise Erdrich's righteous commitment to Native American causes. The result is a stylish romp with a nonconfrontational conclusion. Turtle is launched toward a two-culture future and possibly another sequel.