In 1991, as the novelist Barbara Kingsolver marched outside the Tucson federal building to protest America’s involvement in the Persian Gulf war, a man sped by in a pickup truck and screamed, “Hey Bitch, love it or leave it!” Kingsolver, whose anti-war animus had already driven her to rip yellow ribbons off car antennas, obliged her heckler. She ran off to Spain to ride out what she called the “clamor of war worship” that had taken hold in the States.

Kingsolver herself has become the object of literary cult worship among a multiplying sect of young, white, mostly female readers. They are hooked on her soft, multicultural tales of strong women in strange circumstances. Still, ask one of them about her self-expatriation during the war, and you’re likely to be met with surprise, if not disbelief. Like devotees of daytime soap stars, Kingsolver’s fans identify her with her fictional heroines: She is their girlfriend, their confidant. But what would they think of the unmediated agitprop of the real ingsolver at Ladies Night Out?