Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver · 2018

Willa Knox inherits a crumbling house in Vineland, New Jersey, and tries to hold together her family amid a collapsing economy and a fraught new baby. A century and a half earlier, in the same town, the science teacher Thatcher Greenwood defends Darwin's ideas against a hostile community, with help from the naturalist Mary Treat. The two timelines echo each other across eras of upheaval.

Books mentioned in Unsheltered (12)

• The Well Dressed Man with a Beard by Wallace Stevens: “"After the final no there comes a yes" (epigraph)”
• The Odyssey by Homer: “"If her father-in-law had actually read The Odyssey"; Scylla and Charybdis discussed at table”
• On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: “I stayed awake six nights running when I discovered On the Origin of Species”
• The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin: “...and I did the same last year when The Descent of Man came available”
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: “a whiff of Miss Havisham in Dickens's Great Expectations”
• Flora Novae-Zelandiae by Joseph Dalton Hooker: “his treasured copy of Hooker's Flora Novae-Zelandiae”
• How Plants Behave by Asa Gray: “Gray's newly published How Plants Behave”
• Antigone by Sophocles: “Did you ever even read Antigone?”
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “Dulcinea, as in Don Quixote.”
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: “Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They're from Alice in Wonderland.”
• My Ántonia by Willa Cather: “It's from My Antonia. By Willa Cather. Mama's favorite book.”
• I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman: “I hear America singing! Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs!”