Unsheltered

Unsheltered was written by American author Barbara Kingsolver and first published in 2018. The novel explores themes of family, marriage, science in society, social justice issues, overcoming personal challenges, and new possibilities. Kingsolver is the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and winner of the Orange Prize, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and PEN/Faulkner award, and she has received many other recognitions by national and international associations and publications. Unsheltered is her ninth work of fiction; she is also the author of two essay collections, two volumes of poetry, and three nonfiction books as of 2021. The edition used in this guide is the hardcover first edition published by Harper.

Plot Summary

Willa Knox is a middle-aged magazine editor whose publication recently went out of business. The university where her husband, Iano, was a tenured college professor also shuts down, forcing the couple to move from Virginia to New Jersey so he can teach at a university in Philadelphia. They move into a house Willa inherited from a recently deceased aunt in Vineland, New Jersey, about a 40-minute drive from Philadelphia. Their household also consists of Iano’s elderly disabled father, Nick, and their 26-year-old daughter, Tig, who has been living with them since returning from a stint living in Cuba. As they settle in, Willa and Iano are shocked by the news that their son Zeke’s partner, Helene, has committed suicide just after giving birth to their son Aldus (“Dusty”). Zeke brings Dusty from Boston to Vineland and lives with his parents temporarily. He soon returns to Boston, leaving Dusty to be cared for by Willa and Tig.

Willa quickly finds that her aunt’s house is beginning to deteriorate and that repairs will be too expensive for the family’s meager finances. She enlists the help of a local historical society to find out if she can apply for restoration grants for the historic house. The family’s challenges continue with Nick’s illnesses requiring expensive and demanding medical care, Tig and Iano working low-paying jobs, Willa attempting to find freelance work, struggles over the family’s health insurance, and caring for Dusty. The family has various conversations about the social issues that underpin their own personal challenges, including climate change, immigration, economic inequality, and career stability.

Willa is intrigued by the prospect that one of Vineland’s 19th-century residents, the botanist Mary Treat, may have lived in her house, which would certainly qualify it for financial restoration assistance. However, she discovers that Mary lived next door and another notable Vineland resident, Thatcher Greenwood, lived in her house. However, the family decides that the house is still too expensive to repair. At the end of the novel, Iano gets longer-term work in Philadelphia, and he and Willa get an apartment there. Tig, her boyfriend, and Dusty remain in Vineland and decide to renovate a carriage house (which turns out to have belonged to Mary) into their new home.

The novel’s other storyline takes place in 1875-1876 and is centered on Thatcher, Vineland’s newly hired high school science teacher. Thatcher has recently married a young woman he met in Boston, Rose, whose family used to live in Vineland before her father died. The family—the couple and Rose’s sister and mother—returns to Vineland and the house that Rose’s father built, which is unsound and begins crumbling around them. In the newly founded and rapidly growing Vineland, debate swirls around the use of scientific theories regarding evolution and natural selection in Vineland’s schools. Thatcher, who lives next door to Mary and has befriended her, is drawn into the debate because he supports and wants to teach the controversial theories, which many believe upend traditional Christian beliefs about creation. He defends the methods during two public debates, but the town leaders persuade the public to continue adhering to traditional beliefs and scientific teaching methods. Thatcher and Mary continue to bond, drawn together by their similar outlooks on life and interest in science and the natural world.

Thatcher has also befriended one of the town’s few dissenters from the popular leader Charles Landis, who founded and is highly influential in Vineland. Uri Carruth publishes the only other newspaper besides Landis’s, and after publishing a piece that implicates Landis’s wife, Landis walks up to Carruth and shoots him. Carruth lingers with his gunshot wound but eventually dies. During Landis’s trial, Thatcher testifies on behalf of his friend, but the jury rules that Landis was temporarily insane during the shooting and deems him innocent. Frustrated by these failures and his unhappy marriage to Rose, which ends in divorce, Thatcher decides to leave Vineland.