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

"That sounds like peonage. You're already golden. They should pay you something. A stipend for an internship isn't unheard of."

"They offered that, but it wasn't worth it. The minute I go on payroll I have to start paying back my student loans. We just can't afford that right now. Helene and I decided we'd be better off just on her income, for now."

"All right, but your situation has changed. Couldn't you renegotiate?"

"I still have the student loans."

Willa hadn't pressed for details on his debt and dreaded doing so now. Iano had co-signed when he was a minor, but it was a point of pride with Zeke that he'd handled his own finances since his first year at Stanford. She nodded slowly. "How much?"

He shrugged. "Over a hundred. Around a hundred and ten thousand."

"Jesus, Zeke. I didn't know it was like that. You worked all the way through."

"Yeah, for minimum wage. My income barely covered my books."

Willa couldn't imagine starting adulthood so indentured. She'd gone to state schools on scholarships. "We should never have let you take that on."

"You didn't let me, it was my choice. Remember how hard you tried to talk me out of Stanford? But Dad said go for it, and I just… I wanted it so bad."

Willa did remember, painfully. The house divided, Achilles' heel of their parenting. "I didn't want you not to go to Stanford. I just thought maybe in another year you could get a better ride. That you could transfer in, or something."

"I know. I could have taken the deal with Dad's tuition exchange like Tig did, and gone to some dinky hippie school."

"Ivins isn't that dinky, it's a good college. Hippie, I'll grant you. But tuition exchange was the right way to go for Tig. Given her track record on following through. You're different, you finish things. Iano says they never put students in a hole so deep they can't dig out. We didn't worry too much."

He looked at her, his eyes the indefinite blue of ocean. When she was young Willa had told her mother everything: the amount of her first paycheck, the day of her first missed period. Was it normal now for parents to operate in the dark? She never knew what was fair to ask. Clearly, Zeke was shamed by his financial straits.

"Obviously, we should have worried."

He shrugged. "That's the fix I'm in. If they salaried me right now at entry level at Sanderson, I'd end up in the negative numbers."

"I see." She leaned on the door frame feeling physical loss as her assumptions fell through the floor. He'd done everything by the book. They all had. Willa and Iano raised two children, the successful one and the complicated one. That was their story, for as long as she could remember. For how many years had it been untrue?

"Was there… Did Helene have a pension through her employer?"

"I wouldn't be entitled to it. We're not married."

"Oh, right. Not her social security either. The baby might be due some benefits."

Zeke seemed startled by the notion of his son as a legal person. Willa thought survivor benefits were probably a long shot; Helene was a resident alien, fresh out of law school. She might not have been around quite long enough to get in the game. "I'm sorry to be thinking about practical things right now, honey, but…"

"Yeah. I'm up shit creek. With a baby on board."

"I'm sorry. What about life insurance? You'd be her beneficiary, married or not."

His look darkened. "Suicide, Mom. Nobody pays you to do that."

"Oh. I guess I knew that. But isn't that discrimination? It seems so…"

"Punitive?"

"I was going to say ignorant. Helene died of depression. A medical condition caused by pregnancy and an OB/GYN who cared more about the baby than the mother."

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.