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Harper
October 2018
On Sale: October 16, 2018
480 pages
ISBN: 0062684566
EAN: 9780062684561
Kindle: B075WQK8ZJ
Hardcover / e-Book
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Women's Fiction Contemporary
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. Willa Knox has always prided herself on being the
embodiment of responsibility for her family. Which is why
it’s so unnerving that she’s arrived at middle age with
nothing to show for her hard work and dedication but a
stack of unpaid bills and an inherited brick home in
Vineland, New Jersey, that is literally falling apart.
The magazine where she worked has folded, and the college
where her husband had tenure has closed. The dilapidated
house is also home to her ailing and cantankerous Greek
father-in-law and her two grown children: her stubborn,
free-spirited daughter, Tig, and her dutiful debt-ridden,
ivy educated son, Zeke, who has arrived with his
unplanned baby in the wake of a life-shattering
development. In an act of desperation, Willa begins to investigate the
history of her home, hoping that the local historical
preservation society might take an interest and provide
funding for its direly needed repairs. Through her
research into Vineland’s past and its creation as a
Utopian community, she discovers a kindred spirit from
the 1880s, Thatcher Greenwood. A science teacher with a lifelong passion for honest
investigation, Thatcher finds himself under siege in his
community for telling the truth: his employer forbids him
to speak of the exciting new theory recently published by
Charles Darwin. Thatcher’s friendships with a brilliant
woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor draw him
into a vendetta with the town’s most powerful men. At
home, his new wife and status-conscious mother-in-law
bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his financial
worries and the news that their elegant house is
structurally unsound. Brilliantly executed and compulsively readable,
Unsheltered is the story of two families, in two
centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum, as
they navigate the challenges of surviving a world in the
throes of major cultural shifts. In this mesmerizing
story told in alternating chapters, Willa and Thatcher
come to realize that though the future is uncertain, even
unnerving, shelter can be found in the bonds of kindred—
whether family or friends—and in the strength of the
human spirit.
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