By K.K. Wong
SET IN two timelines, Unsheltered alternates between two centuries, focusing on two struggling characters.
We have Willa Knox living during 2016 in Vineland. Her life is crumbling around her, just like the house she lives in.
Then, there’s Thatcher Greenwood in 1871 Vineland, a science teacher who is at odds with an impossible superior who is hostile to his wish to discuss Darwin’s Theory of Evolution with his students.
Both are living in the same crumbling house, but separated by 145 years of history.
So the reader is taken on a journey of two different, yet similar, characters as each struggles in her or his own way.
Author Barbara Kingsolver has this delightful way of ending each chapter with a phrase that becomes the title of the next chapter, which I find to be both amusing and fun when trying to uncover the connections.
Unsheltered is a piece of fiction but apparently, most of its 19th century characters and events are real.
The book is quite intriguing and an entertaining read initially. Unfortunately, it did not quite manage to sustain my interest to the end.
