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Content snapshot
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Violence
Barely any
No significant violence
Language
Some
Moderate language; literary fiction register
Sexual Content
Barely any
Brief adult romantic relationship; nothing explicit
Substance Use
Barely any
Social drinking; opioid crisis tangentially referenced
Emotional Intensity
A lot
Economic precarity and its psychological weight, the political disorientation of the present moment, idealism against collapse
What this book is about
Willa Knox and her family move into a crumbling historic house in Vineland, New Jersey, as her father-in-law declines, her daughter struggles, and the country around her frays. Alternating with her story: Thatcher Greenwood in 1870s Vineland, a science teacher who dared to teach Darwin in a company town and found his career threatened. Barbara Kingsolver weaves two eras of American optimism and its discontents in a novel about what it costs to live honestly in a dishonest system.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
themes of economic anxiety and political instability
a dying family member as subplot
parallel 19th-century storyline
Reader Verification
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