Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

How I Found:  A favorite author is like a shelter, a place one can go when all else seems untethered. Back with Kingsolver, I found more than one voice in that place to speak to me. With one dilapidated setting in two time periods Willa and Mary were like family not to each other but to me. 
Why You Might Read: While Willa is entirely fictional with a nod to the author of My Antonia, Mary Treat was a scientist who corresponded with the likes of Charles Darwin and Asa Gray as she pursued her own scientific inquiries. As Willa learns more about Mary in an effort to save her crumbling home, she too finds a friend whilst taking care of her family: a daughter, a son, his son, her husband, and his father. With so much to hold on to it’s no wonder, “anxiety was Willa’s steady state....a mother can be only as happy as her unhappiest child; Willa believed in worry to keep people from flying out of orbit.” And this, among so many other reasons, is why Kingsolver made me feel right at home.