Unless

“[Shields is] unsparing as she explores the black holes of uncertainty in women’s lives . . . these are the dark thoughts of an illuminating novel.” — Chicago Tribune The final book from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields,  Unless is a harrowing but ultimately consoling story of one family’s anguish and healing, proving Shields’s mastery of extraordinary fiction about ordinary life. For all of her life, forty-four-year-old Reta Winters has enjoyed the useful monotony of happiness: