Unsheltered
Barbara Kingsolver
(FABER &?Faber, 480 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • tel 020 7799 4064

In 1871 the substantial, newly-built dwellings of Vineland, New Jersey, were already showing signs of having been erected upon shaky foundations.

By 2016 Willa Knox finds her whole life coming apart: laid off from her job on a magazine and struggling to keep her troubled family together in a house crumbling into decay, Willa becomes intrigued by the lives of those who inhabited the same neighborhood in the 1870s. Among these she discovers Mary Treat, a naturalist who corresponded with Darwin. Mary, whose existence and work are historically documented, finds a friend and ally in Thatcher Greenwood – a fictional creation – the new science teacher eager to communicate Darwin’s findings, but thwarted and finally defeated by the powers-that-be in this supposedly utopian community.