Summary

Evolution starts to go backward and society descends into chaos. Pregnant women, including Cedar, are rounded up so their babies can be studied. In the chaos, the country descends into a Christian authoritarian government where the post office protected by the Coast Guard is the only reliable means of communication. The government begins a womb draft.

Characters

Cedar Hawk Songmaker: devotedly catholic, writes a catholic magazine called Zeal, gets pregnant at 26, and is excited at the prospect of having a baby. Reunites with her biological family soon after finding out she’s pregnant.

Sera Songmaker: The adoptive mother of Ceder. Spends her time throughout the book rescuing Ceder from the prison-like hospitals. She is very resourceful but also very worried about her pregnant daughter.

Glen Songmaker: The adoptive (and later revealed biological) father of Ceder. Before evolution began to reverse he was an Environmental Lawyer and after he spent time looking for ways for Ceder to get to safety.

Sweetie (Mary Potts): The biological mother of Ceder who is introduced at the beginning of the novel. She wants to befriend Ceder, but she is also the reason Ceder gets found and sent back to the government.

Eddy: The stepfather of Ceder and husband of Sweetie. He is writing a book that will never end to document reasons to live. He becomes head of the Tribe Council post-reversal of evolution and is focused on reclaiming their tribe’s territory.

Little Mary: The biological sister of Ceder. Seen as a casualty of reservation life as she struggles with drug addiction.

Mary Potts Senior: The biological grandmother of Ceder. She is seen as wise and knowing. Throughout the book Ceder returns to her for advice on their family and on the birth of her future child.

Phil: sheltering 3 pregnant women in the basement of church and taking care of Cedar, gets caught by police and tortured to give up names of pregnant women. Sees the opportunity of Cedar having a healthy baby as a way to become a new social elite

Tia Jackson: Another pregnant woman whom Cedar shares a room with at the hospital prison. They work together to break out with the help of Cedars’s mom, Sera. When Tia eventually gives birth, her baby is stillborn. With no baby to hide, she is able to go back to her previous life and rejoin her husband.

Imagined Human Actions and “Solutions”

Government Control of Reproduction

Scientists are racing to understand how evolution is reversing and its possible ramifications. There is a fear that the next generation may not have the capacity for speech or may be Neanderthals instead of humans. To address the crisis, the government institutes a harsh and strictly controlled reproduction program. The Patriot Act was expanded so the government could seize medical records and determine the identities of pregnant women across the country. Pregnant women are encouraged to turn themselves in so they can stay at government-run hospitals. These hospitals are more like prisons where women cannot choose to leave. To hold all the pregnant women, prisons are emptied and turned into “hospitals.” The prisoners who originally occupied the prisons are killed or trained to hunt down pregnant women. 

As time passes, the government becomes increasingly militant in its reproduction program. Community members are offered rewards to bring in pregnant women. A womb draft is established where women of child-bearing age can be conscripted to be implanted with a random frozen embryo using IVF. The government effectively turns pregnant women into martyrs as they exploit them in efforts to continue the human race as we know it. 

Technology Responses

Throughout the book, modern technology slowly begins to vanish as the world dissolves into chaos. When the news of evolution reversing breaks, communities use television and radios to stay updated. Quickly, the available media becomes propaganda under the control of the government. Eventually, television and radio stop working all together, and there is almost no way to get reliable news. People have to depend on the postal service to communicate over any distance. While modern communication technology fails for the average citizen, the government utilizes more advanced surveillance technology. New devices called Listeners or Ears, are tiny ear-shaped devices that float through the air, no bigger than a seed. Some of them are even transparent. These are used to listen in on the population and catch pregnant women or those helping them. 

Additionally, IVF technology comes under the control of the government. They take all frozen embryos from before the time of evolution reversing and begin implanting them in women who have been arrested or selected through the womb draft. Technology and the controlling of reproduction become part of the same human response.

Growth of religion in a time of chaos

The scientifically unexplainable phenomenon of evolution reversing inspired a mass turn to religion for explanation and solace. Glen, for example, sees the reversal of evolution as Mother Nature’s retribution for all the damage humans have done. A variety of Christian movements see it as God reversing creation, which could only mean the end of the world. The title of the book, “Future Home of the Living God,” invokes this sentiment that the return of God will be the end of humanity. As people turn to religion to process the situation, streets are renamed to bible verses. The statue of Saint Kateri on the Ojibwe reservation becomes a site of pilgrimage for those seeking a connection to God during a time of chaos.

Portrayal of Heroes and Villains

Throughout the novel, the most prevalent “heroes” are Sera Songmaker and Eddy, both of whom hold parental roles in the plot. The two adults provide Cedar with reassurance and safety as the world descends into chaos. Sera is portrayed as a loving mother who has her faults but simply wants the best for her child. When Sera meets Cedar’s biological parents, instead of looking down on them, she befriends them and tries to understand their world. When Cedar is taken to the hospital, Sera is the one who finds a way to get a job as a nurse and help Cedar and Tia escape. Sera always tries to keep Cedar safe. Similarly, Eddy plays a fatherly role in Cedar’s life, even though they just recently met. Eddy is the first person that Cedar tells about her pregnancy. He is the one who sends notes to her when she is in the hospital with codes on when to escape. Eddy holds further hero power because he also is elected leader of the Ojibwe reservation and begins to buy back land for the tribe. 

The main villains in the novel are the government, scientists, and the nurses who are imprisoning pregnant women in hospitals or prisons. The government and its scientists are the biggest villains in Cedar’s story as they are the ones who made the call to round up all the pregnant women and experiment on the babies. The villains in Cedar’s day-to-day life are the nurses in the hospital, specifically Orielee. While other nurses like The Slider and Geri make Cedar’s life difficult, Orielee lulls Cedar into a sense of false friendship and kindness just to trick her into trusting her.

Other characters are neither heroes nor villains but instead carry a grey ethical role in the novel. Phil, Cedar’s boyfriend can be considered one of these people. For the first part of the book, Phil seems to be a hero, as he does everything in his power to keep Cedar hidden and safe from the authorities. However, later it is revealed that Phil was caught and tortured into revealing where Cedar was hiding, causing her to be taken by the government. When Phil and Cedar are reunited, Phil tries to get Cedar to run away with him. He explains that Cedar might be carrying one of the original babies that wasn’t impacted by the backward evolution, which makes her special. He says that they could be very powerful in this new world. Phil represents the human that is corrupted by the world descending into chaos. His intentions are good, however, by the end of the book he is only thinking about how to help himself. We can see this similar seemingly selfish motivation in other characters in the book. For example, the people who kidnapped Cedar and turned her into the government needed the money reward to feed their family. In a world where everything is falling apart, people are pushed to do things they would not have done before.

American Environmental Thought & Climate Themes

Myth of the “Ecological Indian”

Cedar Songmaker grew up with her adoptive white parents who treated her like an “Indian princess”. When she was young, Cedar was seen by her peers as being special and connected to nature due to her Native heritage. Her parents helped her embrace this native image by always keeping her hair in braids. It took her going to college and meeting other Natives to realize it was a constructed image of indigeneity and she didn’t have a connection with her native roots. She was also disappointed to learn that her biological family did not fit the stereotype of an indigenous family. Instead, her given name was Mary Potts, and her biological family, the Potts, owned a gas station on the reservation. 

Additionally, Phil once told Cedar that she reminded him of the Land O’ Lakes Butter Maiden, on the logo of the one-pound butter box. She was a voluptuous Native girl kneeling in nature representing a constant in his childhood. Phil fetishized her as an exotic Native woman who was connected with nature in the way that he wanted to be. These two examples of white characters placing their assumptions of Native people on Cedar represent the prevalent theme of the “Ecological Indian” in American history. The myth that indigenous people are inherently more connected to the environment t has been common in media for decades, however, it holds little truth. Erdrich uses her white characters to critique these assumptions and show how wrong they can be.

Home and Environment

The environment plays a role in this novel as something safe and sacred that can protect Cedar and her family. In a way, it is romanticized as something that the pregnant woman can’t have because they are hiding from the authorities/people in charge. Multiple times Cedar expresses the want to venture outside after being trapped indoors for so long. These sentiments are expressed when she is hiding in her home and when she is locked in the hospital room. This theme is reflected throughout American literature in writings about the wilderness and the environment being the “real home”. Wealthy white men venture into the jungle to prove themselves worthy and women preach back to the land practices. Although this is a minor theme throughout the book, it feels important to mention that the lack of involvement in the environment is trying to portray something bigger.

Evolution Reverses

The end-of-the-world premise of this book is that evolution is reversing. Children are not born with the same genetic abilities and people are concerned about the uncertainty of the future. People question whether children born now will speak, read, or write. They wonder how far back evolution will shift. Since the novel is written from Cedar’s perspective, the readers don’t know the scientific details about the crisis since the government is keeping the public in the dark. From Ceder’s point of view, it seems like the government also doesn’t know what’s going on. 

Although this is never explicitly stated, climate change and a warming planet may be the cause of evolution reversing. In addition to children being born differently, people were spotting ancient animals around the country. It is clear to the reader that things are mutating and shifting, which may have to do with the amount of change that the Earth is going through. The last journal entry in the book is written after Cedar gives birth to her baby. She recalls a time when it used to snow and the feeling the cold brought her. She wonders if her child will ever get to see the snow, or if snow will be a distant memory by the time they are old enough. These occurrences throughout the book leave you with a feeling of fear regarding whether our changing climate could result in crazy circumstances such as evolution shifting backward.