2016: Willa discovers that most of what she has founded her life upon is under threat.

There is bad news about her family home but tragedy is just around the corner.

Barbara Kingsolver's novel interweaves the past and the present to explore the human capacity for resilience and compassion in times of great upheaval.

It is a portrait of life in precarious times - when characters discover that the past has failed to prepare them for the future.

Alternating between two centuries, Kingsolver examines the personal and social shocks that ensue when people’s assumptions about the world and their place in it are shaken to their foundations.

First omnibus of three abridged by Sian Preece.

Read by Laurel Lefkow.

Barbara Kingsolver is the bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna and Flight Behaviour.

Producer: Gaynor Macfarlane

First broadcast BBC Radio 4 in December 2018. Show less