December, 2019, both Dottie and Judy recommend Kingsolver’s “Unsheltered”. My apologies, Dottie, because I can’t find your recommendation. Comments from Judy follows:
Greeting from Puerto Vallarta Mexico where it has been sunny, balmy, breezey, and a constant 75 degrees F since we arrived four days ago. And also where I have just finished Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered now out in paperback and recently recommended to all of us by Dottie.
If you are a Kingsolver fan like me, you’ll want to get your hands on this one right away and join Dottie”s discussion of it offline. It’s a “doozer” that speaks intelligently and carefully to our political divide through the eyes of a multigenerational middle class family living in one house and faced with declining fortunes and options through no fault of their own — composed of a dying conservative and angry MAGA grandfather, a moderate and concerned mother just like most of us, a charming handsome and apolitical dad, and two adult siblings, a 30ish boy looking to cash in on Wall St at the expense of everyone else, and a smart 20ish independent millennium girl with a very different view of what’s happening to the world, why, and how to deal with it.
As if that’s not enough to digest, this whole story set in 2016 just before the election, is offset chapter for chapter by a second story of another family who lived in the same house in an equally divisive and perilous time for the country, 1870, just after the Civil War.
It’s the kind of novel so filled with ideas that I’m feeling like I should start right back on page 1 and read it all over again. Thanks so much, Dottie, for prompting me to get a copy as soon as I read your email to the Chat. It has changed my thinking about the future.
From your editor: Oh my heavens, what an amazing book. I, too, am going to read it over again. How on earth does Barbara Kingsolver come up with these marvelous stories! Liz Webfoot, February, 2020
