Excerpt from Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Willa had barely spoken with them, mostly to apologize for Iano's absence, emphasizing the brand new job and disabled father, downplaying their inability to afford a quick fly-in. At a glance she read these parents as distant, and not just geographically. Helene had spent her childhood in boarding schools. Of course, they were British. She would have to work hard not to read Helene's whole life backward as a reel of emotional injuries spooling toward suicide. Brain chemistry, Zeke kept saying, and Willa understood. At the end of her run at the magazine she'd been science and health editor; she had a professional grasp of disease. Helene had been a whole person like anyone else – the woman with whom Zeke had fallen in love – except when her brain salts began to precipitate their potent horrors. There but for the grace of serotonin go the rest of us.

Aldus finally crash-landed into sleep and went still in her arms, hiccupping but otherwise relaxed. Willa stroked his crazy hair. He had more than an infant's normal share, jet black like Helene's, standing up from his head as if in horror at this life he'd landed in. His translucent eyelids and pursed lips aroused protectiveness and amplified Willa's sorrow for her tall, handsome, devastated son, who was now walking toward the pulpit to read the eulogy. She'd warned against this, telling him it would be hard to hold it together in front of a crowd, harder than any presentation he'd ever given. And that was before Zeke told her what he planned to read: the suicide note. Willa had lost it then, there had been some yelling for which she now felt terrible. They were exhausted. When he'd handed it over and made Willa read it, she couldn't stop the tears.

Zeke was right, of course. The poor girl must have labored for months over this articulate essay, a final accounting of her gratitude for Zeke's love, their three years together, and her hopes for their child. For eulogy purposes they'd only had to edit out the fatal caveat: Helene's belief that her best gift to her partner and son was the removal of her poisonous self from their lives.



Willa had stopped wondering if things could get worse, and now sat in her son's bedroom going through his girlfriend's night stand, throwing out little bottles labeled "O Play" and "Love Lube." She felt abstractly relieved that they'd enjoyed a sex life despite everything – pregnancy, depression, drugs with well-known damping effects on libido. This task felt as surreal as everything else she'd done since speeding up the New Jersey Turnpike to Boston, with sleeping in the bed of the freshly deceased as a starting point. At whatever early morning hour she'd arrived, Zeke had given Willa the bed and slept on the couch by the bassinette. With daylight gaining traction around her she'd lain awake on the very spot where Helene had ended her life, until she finally had to get up and creep to the living room like some Victorian-novel ghost, staring at the child in the bassinette and the wrecked young father on the sofa. She longed to slip with them into unconsciousness. Anything to avoid going back to that haunted bedroom. She couldn't ask which side of the bed had been Helene's but hadn't stopped wondering, either, until just now when she finished boxing up the clothes and started on the night stands.

Post funeral, post burial, post whatever they called the gathering her friends had gamely organized at Helene's law firm, the suffocating truth was descending: many lives were over. Zeke and his child would persist on some utterly unplanned path, starting with eviction from this apartment Zeke couldn't afford on his own. The lease was in Helene's name, so he could walk away without legal recourse. Willa was dubious: in her experience landlords always won. But Zeke explained it was one advantage of their being unmarried. For another, Helene's serious credit card debt would not become his problem. Also, her Mercedes and its staggering monthly payments zipped right back to the dealer.

Excerpted from Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver. Copyright © 2018 by Barbara Kingsolver. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.