Unsheltered

by Kingsolver, Barbara
ISBN: 9780062684738
2.5 (2)
Availability:
$9.49
Used - Trade Paperback - 9780062684738

Available Offers

Ship to HPB West Lane Avenue Out of stock at HPB West Lane Avenue Check other stores
$1.99 - Ready for pickup Apr 10 - 13
Ship to Me
$3.99 - Get it Apr 10 - 13

Overview

New York Times bestseller

An NPR pick for Best Books of 2018

An O, The Oprah Magazine's Best Book of 2018

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2018

One of Christian Science Monitor's best fiction reads of 2018

One of Newsweek's Best Books of the year

The New York Times bestselling author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, and The Poisonwood Bible and recipient of numerous literary awards--including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Orange Prize--returns with a timely novel that interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.

How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family's one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own.

In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town's powerful men.

Unsheltered is the compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.

  • Format: TradePaperback
  • Author: Kingsolver, Barbara
  • ISBN: 9780062684738
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 8.00 x 1.20
  • Number Of Pages: 496
  • Publication Year: 2019

Customer Reviews

Rating Snapshot

5 ★   0%
4 ★   0%
3 ★   50%
2 ★   50%
1 ★   0%
2.5
2 Ratings

0

0% Would Recommend
0 Recommendations

Review Images

Sort by:
Filter by:

  • Not the most enjoyable book from a great writer

    cww c. - 5 years 10 months ago

    I really wanted to like this book, have enjoyed others by the author. Great premise and structure. But the author did a couple of things that were irritating. She spent a lot of time explaining what the characters are feeling instead of just showing us what happened and letting us figure it out for ourselves. She included a lot of extraneous dialogue that didn't really help us understand the characters or advance the plot. Such a pity. This could've been a great book. Maybe she's become so popular -- or "important" -- that she doesn't receive (or listen to) honest criticism from early readers. #SummerReading

  • A Story That Goes No Where

    Megan I. - 5 years 11 months ago

    I kept wanting this story to go somewhere. I thoroughly have enjoyed other Barbara Kingsolver's books, so I had high hopes. Wordy and no climax and although all was tied up in a neat bow at the end, it left zero impression on me. In three months time I will forget I've even read this.