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.

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 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. 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.

Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. The magazine where Willa worked has folded the college where her husband had tenure has closed. 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. 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.

Unsheltered by barbara kingsolver