Steinem Sisters Collection Book Club

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdich

A discussion group dedicated to feminist reading from the Library's Steinem Sisters Collection.

The Future Home of the Living God

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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. Twenty-six-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.

The Steinem Sisters Collection champions women’s historical, cultural, and political contributions and strives to provide a welcoming space for women from all walks of life to share their truths. It is composed of “feminist materials,” intersectional works that uphold human and women’s rights and interests in defining and promoting political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes, races, classes, sexual orientations, and genders. The Steinem Sisters Collection has grown to over 900 titles in the ten years since its inception. Regular programming, including book discussion groups and talking circles, aims to highlight the collection and build community. This collection was made possible due to a generous donation by The Steinem’s Sisters Collective.