Thatcher Greenwood, a local teacher, is intrigued by his new neighbor, who he at first takes for an eccentric before realizing she’s a respected scientist whose knowledge far surpasses his. It’s the late 1860s, and the planned community of Vineland is confronting cultural shifts it wasn’t prepared for. Mary Treat is the next-door neighbor of the fictional Greenwood family. Both households find themselves in poorly constructed dwellings on faulty foundations, during a time of sweeping cultural and historical change.

There’s the 19th-century Greenwood family, and the contemporary household overseen by Willa Knox - who has moved to Vineland in the year approaching Donald Trump’s election. Kingsolver went into the archives and got her hands on Treat’s papers and correspondence with Darwin, emerging with 'Unsheltered,' a gripping novel of two multigenerational households set in Vineland, New Jersey. So thank God for Barbara Kingsolver, one of America’s hardiest novelists ('The Poisonwood Bible,' 'The Bean Trees,' etc.), who has also stumbled upon the lost history of Treat. Who was she? And why did I only learn about her because of a wallpaper design? Treat's work is forgotten, but she was a specialist in carnivorous plants, published several books and influenced the work of Charles Darwin. Treat.” The design was inspired by Mary Treat, an American scientist in the late 19th century. Designed by a small company called Grow House Grow, the name of the pattern was “Ms. A few years ago, I bought floral wallpaper covered in flowers and vines and Venus flytraps and ants.

Unsheltered book review