Beverly Unitarian Church

Monday, August 12 book club discussion at Harriet Arnold’s, 11338 S. Fairfield, 773/882-3512 

Unsheltered (Barbara  Kingsolver) Unsheltered begins on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, when Willa, a freelance journalist whose family has fallen on hard times, discovers that the house they've moved into has a “nonexistent foundation.” Hoping to enlist restoration help from a historical society, Willa traces the origins of the house to Thatcher Greenwood, a science teacher who lived there in the 1870s, and his neighbor, a real-life woman biologist named Mary Treat, whose research supported Charles Darwin’s theory of the origin of species. Just as Darwin’s theory challenged the Victorian belief in the Judeo-Christian creation myth, so too, in Willa’s era, does global warming challenge prevailing myths about the future of civilization. Kingsolver... carries off this cleverly structured dual narrative with aplomb and with a certain degree of rage at charismatic politicians, both past and present, whose disregard for science puts humanity in peril. (Sarah Harrison Smith, Amazon Book Review)