為什麼努力工作的兩人，最後卻落得貧困的下場？

薇拉和丈夫一直盡忠職守地工作、負起社會責任、養育子女孝順父母，但薇拉工作的雜誌社倒閉了，丈夫原本已獲得終身職位的學校也倒閉，兩人除了一身債，還有一間繼承來的、已經快要瓦解的磚造房子，還要照顧行動不便的丈人，還有以自己需求為中心的女人，家中唯一看似生活比較順遂的兒子，畢業自常春藤名校，但卻捲入一場糾紛中……

為什麼說出實話的人，反而會被責罵呢？

柴契爾是一個以誠實研究為己任的科學老師，但他的僱主卻禁止他談及達爾文
最新發表的一篇精彩文章，柴契爾的年輕妻子和趨炎附勢岳母卻因為擔心謠言會帶來的影響，所以謊稱他們雅致的房子其實不穩固的說法是假的。在這個小村莊裡，柴契爾只是希望可以誠實正當地盡到自己的責任，反被有權人士視為眼中釘……

《毒木聖經》作者芭芭拉．金索沃的最新作品，敘述兩個不同時代的兩家人，身處因為過去無法作為未來根基而導致的危險時代中，所展現出的彈性。

The New York Times bestselling author of Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, and The Poisonwood Bible and recipient of numerous literary awards--including the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the Orange Prize--returns with a timely novel that interweaves past and present to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great upheaval.

How could two hardworking people do everything right in life, a woman asks, and end up destitute? Willa Knox and her husband followed all the rules as responsible parents and professionals, and have nothing to show for it but debts and an inherited brick house that is falling apart. The magazine where Willa worked has folded; the college where her husband had tenure has closed. Their dubious shelter is also the only option for a disabled father-in-law and an exasperating, free-spirited daughter. When the family's one success story, an Ivy-educated son, is uprooted by tragedy he seems likely to join them, with dark complications of his own.

In another time, a troubled husband and public servant asks, How can a man tell the truth, and be reviled for it? A science teacher with a passion for honest investigation, Thatcher Greenwood finds himself under siege: his employer forbids him to speak of the exciting work just published by Charles Darwin. His young bride and social-climbing mother-in-law bristle at the risk of scandal, and dismiss his worries that their elegant house is unsound. In a village ostensibly founded as a benevolent Utopia, Thatcher wants only to honor his duties, but his friendships with a woman scientist and a renegade newspaper editor threaten to draw him into a vendetta with the town's powerful men.

Unsheltered is the compulsively readable story of two families, in two centuries, who live at the corner of Sixth and Plum in Vineland, New Jersey, navigating what seems to be the end of the world as they know it. With history as their tantalizing canvas, these characters paint a startlingly relevant portrait of life in precarious times when the foundations of the past have failed to prepare us for the future.