Unsheltered, a captivating novel by Barbara Kingsolver, captures the angst of change as it affects families in two different eras. The story takes place in Vineland, New Jersey.

Willa and Iano Knox are facing hard times. The magazine she wrote for has folded, and the college in which her husband Iano had tenure has closed. Their two adult children have lives of their own though their daughter, Tig, lives with them. Her mother fears Tig will carry the terrible-twos into old age. Their son, who lives in Boston, is agonizing over his partner’s death, leaving their new-born son, who is now living with Willa and Iano. Iano’s cranky father, critically ill with advanced diabetes, also lives with them and needs constant medical attention. In the meantime, their home, a brick house that Willa inherited, is collapsing around them with crumbling ceilings, moldy walls, a sagging roof, and ruptured ductwork. Because of a gas leak, they cook on a campstove. The house is obviously damaged beyond repair.

One hundred fifty years earlier, in the 1870s, Thatcher Greenwood, his new bride and her social-climbing mother live in the same house as the Knox’s, but they have just had it built. Thatcher can see that the house is unsound, but the women in his life refuse to acknowledge it. Their main concern is social status. Thatcher is a science teacher and has a passion for seeking the truth. He is fascinated by the exciting just-published work of Charles Darwin, but his employer forbids him to speak of it to his students, believing that Darwin’s theories are anti-Christian. Thatcher makes friends with a neighbor, Mary Treat, a naturalist who regularly corresponds with Darwin on her findings with plants and insects.

Unsheltered weaves the present and past, allowing us to examine life as it is now and how it was in bygone days, and the human capacity for resiliency and compassion. Upheaval in some form is always present. How we deal with it dictates our future.

Barbara Kingsolver has managed to write another equally exceptional novel as The Poisonwood Bible, a novel I read and reviewed ten years ago. Unsheltered has a similar message as it deals with ordinary characters under extraordinary circumstances. I loved this provocative novel and highly recommend it.