1874: Thatcher tries to address the issue of his disintegrating home.

2016: Willa tries to uncover a source of income to shore up her equally rundown house.

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.

Abridged in fifteen parts by Sian Preece.

Read by Laurel Lefkow.

Producer: Gaynor Macfarlane

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2018. Show less