Future Home of the Living God: Louise Erdrich - Softcover

Erdrich, Louise

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472153359 ISBN 13: 9781472153357

Publisher: Corsair, 2017

'Erdrich is one of the greatest living American writers' Guardian Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. The world as we know it is ending. Evolution has reversed itself, affecting every living creature on earth. Science cannot stop the world from running backwards, as woman after woman gives birth to infants that appear to be primitive species of humans. Thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of big-hearted, open-minded Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby's origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity. There are rumors of martial law, of Congress confining pregnant women. Of a registry, and rewards for those who turn these wanted women in. Flickering through the chaos are signs of increasing repression: a shaken Cedar witnesses a family wrenched apart when police violently drag a mother from her husband and child in a parking lot. The streets of her neighborhood have been renamed with Bible verses. A stranger answers the phone when she calls her adoptive parents, who have vanished without a trace. It will take all Cedar has to avoid the prying eyes of potential informants and keep her baby safe. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time. 'Her talent for description second to none' Observer 'Erdrich is the poet laureate of the contemporary Native American experience' Mail on Sunday 'Perhaps the most important of Erdrich's achievements is her mastery of complex forms ...Woven into the specificity of these narratives is Erdrich's determination to speak of the most pressing human questions' New York Times

Review:

Tense and memorable . . . A journey worth taking and a worthy addition to contemporary apocalyptic fiction. (Daily Mail)

Believable and absorbing . . . Smart and compelling, it's ultimately deeply unsettling . . . because it all feels horribly plausible. (SFX magazine)

Erdrich is a wonderful storyteller and this rich, poetic tapestry is shot through with threads of despair and glints of hope. She deals unflinchingly with religion's capacity to oppress, but also offers the consolations of spirituality. (Daily Mail)

If you enjoyed Naomi Alderman's The Power then Future Home is a more plangent, reflective variation on a theme . . . The tone is dreamy, close, pressing . . . an unsettling tale. (The Times)

There is something particularly filmic about Cedar's story. At times, her address to her unborn son resembles the voiceover of Sarah Connor, the pregnant mother on the run from cyborgs in the Terminator series. Erdrich's narrative is not derivative or pulpy but its scenes are fast, visual, action-packed, perfect for film. And Cedar, like Sarah, is angry, fugitive, both powerless and brave, and ultimately a hero-mother in this chilling book,which is at once a dystopia and a state-of-the-nation novel. (Financial Times)

Book Description:

Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event.

• Publisher: Corsair
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1472153359
• ISBN 13: 9781472153357
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288