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 Paula Gunn Allen describes how “westerners have for a long time discounted the importance of background.  The earth herself, which is our most inclusive background, is dealt with summarily as a source of food, metals, water, and profit, while the fact that she is the fundamental agent of all planetary life is blithely ignored” (243).  I believe that Prodigal Summer approaches background and foreground in a way that is similar to the Native Americans in which there is a mutual relationship between the foreground and the background.  Rather than writing about a central character, Kingsolver weaves together the stories of several lives.  These lives are constantly dictated by the forces of nature, and the author is constantly stresses the impact of nature on their lives.  Nature is not just the background, but it dictates the story by influences the character’s choices and behavior.  Something that I found interesting was the constant use of cycles.  Life and death, the moon, the growing seasons, the cycle of food in nature—these cycles stressed how everything impacts each other, and that ultimately a choice made by a human will come back impact him/her in the future.  The beginning and the end of the book also stressed the importance of cycles.  There is a parralel between Deanna and the female cayote at the beginning and the end of the book.  This demonstrates the similarities between humans and nature, and that in the end we are all at the mercy of mother nature, no matter how much we attempt to control our lives.