Thatcher’s crisis is in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the survivors are still struggling over the historical meaning of that devastating conflict. In case you’re still putting together what the metaphor represents, it may help to know that Willa’s crisis comes during the election of 2016 with Trump’s speeches constantly in the background. In neither case is the rent really free instead, the houses both come with social expectations and obligations - and turn out to be white elephants. He became a poorly paid adjunct professor and the house they inherited represented free rent. Iano is a downwardly mobile professor whose tenured position ended when his college went bankrupt. His wife, from the Vineland upper class, was temporarily down on her luck when they met, but Thatcher’s income provides enough for them to move back to her childhood home. Thatcher’s house was built on the cheap and is gradually falling down Willa’s house was built on the ruins of that house, but half of it lacks a foundation and is gradually pulling away from the other half of the house.Ĭlass enters into the mix - Thatcher, a workman, managed to go to school and become a teacher. Thatcher Greenwood and his wife Rose are part of a household at the same address in the late 1860s, when Landis reigned.

Willa and her husband Iano have inherited a house in Vineland, New Jersey, a community that was founded as a kind of utopia by strong, patriarchal Charles Landis, who ruled over the town like a king. The houses must be torn down and something else put in their place. However, “Unsheltered” is instead a novel that’s constructed around a strong metaphor - two families, separated by 150 years, living in the same location in houses where mistakes in construction mean that, at some point, repair is impossible. Barbara Kingsolver once said that when she writes a novel, she starts with the plot.

Unsheltered reviews