Unsheltered Study Guide

Born in Maryland in 1955, Barbara Kingsolver moved with her family to Kentucky at age two and later relocated to Léopoldville, Congo. A classical pianist, Kingsolver attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana on a music scholarship but later changed her major to biology. Kingsolver later earned a master’s degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona. After graduation, she worked as a freelance journalist and settled in Tucson, Arizona. Kingsolver published her first novel, The Bean Trees, in 1988. Kingsolver’s writing career took off with the 1998 publication of her best-known novel, The Poisonwood Bible, which won the National Book Prize of South Africa. She went on to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the inaugural Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2000, President Bill Clinton awarded Kingsolver the National Humanities Medal. Her most recent novel, Demon Copperhead (2022), explores the opioid crisis in southern Appalachia and won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A longtime advocate for social justice, in 2000, Kingsolver established the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, a literary prize awarded to U.S. writers whose work supports positive social change. Kingsolver lives and works on a farm in southern Appalachia with her husband Steven Hopp and her two grown daughters. 

Kingsolver’s novel is based on real historical events. In 1861, Charles Landis purchased the original 30,000 acres of land which eventually became Vineland, New Jersey. Landis hoped to found a utopian community that valued temperance, agricultural development, and progressive philosophy. By 1875, about 11,000 people lived in Vineland, including naturalist and botanist Mary Treat. As in Kingsolver’s novel, the historical Mary Treat corresponded with Charles Darwin, whose theories of evolution and natural selection (published in 1859) were the subject of much controversy. Treat also made significant contributions to the fields of entomology and botany, specializing in carnivorous plants and the flora and fauna of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. In 1875, Charles Landis shot Uri Carruth in the back of the head in the offices of The Vineland Independent, Carruth’s newspaper. When Carruth eventually died, Landis stood trial and was found not guilty on the basis of temporary insanity. The United States embargo against Cuba, which Tig and Zeke discuss sporadically, has prohibited trade between U.S. businesses and Cuban interests since 1958. The embargo was enacted in response to the Cuban Revolution, which overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista and saw the rise of Fidel Castro and socialism. Finally, the unnamed politician Willa calls “the Bullhorn” represents then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who famously remarked in January of 2016 that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still retain his voting base. He was elected later that year and re-elected in 2024.

Readers who enjoy Kingsolver’s style will appreciate her novel Flight Behavior (2012), the predecessor to Unsheltered (2018). Flight Behavior examines the devastating impacts of climate change and the confrontation of uncomfortable truths. Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things (2013), like Unsheltered, examines themes of human enlightenment and evolution. The novel tells the story of a botanist who falls in love with a utopian artist in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Jeffrey Eugenides’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex (2002) presents the reader with another domestic drama about a family of Greek origins. Like the Knox-Tavoularis clan, the family at the center of Eugenides’s novel falls into financial ruin in pursuit of the American Dream. For readers interested in parallel narratives across time, Claire Cameron’s The Last Neanderthal (2017) follows two women—a pregnant archaeologist and the eldest daughter of a Neanderthal family—united by their experiences of early motherhood. For a nonfiction approach to Charles Darwin’s theories, Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution (2012) by Rebecca Stott investigates historical figures who dared to contradict existing spiritual beliefs about humanity’s origins in their pursuit of emerging scientific theories. Finally, for a masterful exploration of the way human life is inextricably entwined with the existence of other living things, Richard Powers’s 2018 novel The Overstory follows nine Americans whose deep connection with trees brings them together to address environmental destruction.