A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows the efforts of a pregnant woman who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species. 300,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows pregnant twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a primitive human species. - (Baker & Taylor)

A New York Times Notable Book

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. 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.

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.

A New York Times Notable Book

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. 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.

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.

Evolution stops as mysteriously as it began. Pregnancy and childbearing quickly become issues of state security. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar, the adopted daughter of idealistic Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

As Cedar travels north to find her Ojibwe family, ordinary life begins to disintegrate. Swelling panic creates warring government, corporate, and religious factions. In a mall parking lot, Cedar witnesses a pregnant woman wrenched from her family under a new law. As she evades capture, Cedar also experiences a fraught love with her baby’s father, who tries to hide her. 

An unexpected dystopian thriller from a writer of startling originality, Future Home of the Living God is also a moving meditation on female agency, love, self-determination, biology,  and natural rights. 

Evolution stops as mysteriously as it began. Pregnancy and childbearing quickly become issues of state security. Twenty-six-year-old Cedar, the adopted daughter of idealistic Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant.

As Cedar travels north to find her Ojibwe family, ordinary life begins to disintegrate. Swelling panic creates warring government, corporate, and religious factions. In a mall parking lot, Cedar witnesses a pregnant woman wrenched from her family under a new law. As she evades capture, Cedar also experiences a fraught love with her baby's father, who tries to hide her. 

An unexpected dystopian thriller from a writer of startling originality, Future Home of the Living God is also a moving meditation on female agency, love, self-determination, biology,  and natural rights. 

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* Cedar Hawk Songmaker, the adopted Native American daughter of two white "Minnesota liberals," is secretly pregnant when she discovers that her birth name is Mary Potts. With this slash of wry cultural irony, Erdrich (LaRose, 2016) launches a breakout work of speculative fiction in which a sudden reversal of evolution is underway, threatening the future of humankind and life itself. The disintegrating, increasingly fascist and evangelical government is rounding up and incarcerating pregnant women, so Cedar heads to her Ojibwe birth mother's reservation. But no place is safe and she is soon on the run. Throughout her harrowing, often darkly funny ordeal, she keeps a journal for her child—whom she knows she has little chance of raising—recounting, with exceptional sensory and psychological precision, the horrors of her predicament, the wild courage of the underground network helping fugitive mothers-to-be, and, in stark contrast to the violent chaos, the miraculous growth of her fetus.In this feverish cautionary tale, Erdrich enters the realm of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1985), Emily Schultz's The Blondes (2015), Edan Lepucki's California (2014), Laura van den Berg's Find Me (2015), and Claire Vaye Watkins' Gold, Fame, Citrus (2015), infusing her masterful, full-tilt dystopian novel with stinging insights into the endless repercussions of the Native American genocide, hijacked spirituality, and the ongoing war against women's rights. A tornadic, suspenseful, profoundly provoking novel of life's vulnerability and insistence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Erdrich's devoted readers will flock, of course, but so will a wider audience attracted by the bold apocalyptic theme, searing social critique, and high-adrenaline action. Copyright 2017 Booklist Reviews.

Library Journal Reviews

With evolution seemingly running in reverse (women are giving birth to an apparently primitive species), Cedar Hawk Songmaker is desperate to find her Ojibwe birth mother before telling her adoptive parents that she is pregnant. Soon she's on the run from a registry of expectant mothers. The inimitable Erdrich catches the dystopian zeitgeist; with a 300,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal Reviews

Born on an Ojibwe reservation, Cedar Songmaker was adopted by Sera and Glen, an ultraliberal couple who made sure Cedar never forgot her tribal roots. Now 26, single, and pregnant, Cedar is living in a dystopian future, where a biological calamity appears to be reversing evolution. To tamp down panic, cable and telecommunications companies have been seized. Many women are dying in childbirth, their babies not viable. An ultrasound indicates that Cedar's child might be perfect, which sets her on the run from laws that call for rounding up and incarcerating mothers-to-be until delivery. Whom can she trust? Phil, the father of her child; her tribal family, who could spirit her to Canada; her adoptive parents, who have disappeared? In a narrative that is propulsive, wry, and keenly observant, Cedar records her fears in a diary for her unborn baby. Though Erdrich (Round House; LaRose) struggles to wrap up these observances in a single, cohesive message, she unpacks a Pandora's box of contemporary thematic threads, including environmental devastation, religious intolerance, censorship, and government overreach of women's reproductive rights. VERDICT Quite different from Erdrich's previous work, this chilling speculative fiction is perfect for readers seeking the next Handmaid's Tale. [See Prepub Alert, 5/8/17.]—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Set in Minnesota in a dystopian future in which evolution is going haywire, much of this startling new work of speculative fiction by Erdrich (LaRose) takes the form of a diary by pregnant Cedar Hawk Songmaker addressed to her unborn child. Happily raised and well-educated by her adopted parents Sera and Glen Songmaker, Cedar decides nevertheless to visit her Ojibwe birth family on the rez up north. But times are strange: "our world is running backward. Or forward. Or maybe sideways." Flora and fauna are taking on prehistoric characteristics, and there is talk of viruses. It isn't long before pregnant women are being rounded up. Cedar meets up again with her baby's father, Phil, and for a while she hides with him. But eventually she is caught by the authorities, who reveal nothing about what is happening. A hospital incarceration, escape, violence, and murder ensue as Cedar and other pregnant women she meets along the way—helped by the valiant Sera, Cedar's adoptive mother—will do anything to protect themselves and their babies. Erdrich's characters are brave and conscientious, but none of them really come across as people; they act mostly as vehicles for Erdrich's ideas. Those ideas, however—reproductive freedom, for one, and faith in and respect for the natural world—are strikingly relevant. Erdrich has written a cautionary tale for this very moment in time. (Nov.)