Future Home of the Living God

Science says the world is going backward. Humans are no longer evolving; in fact, they are going back. Pregnancy and birth are now a matter concerning the government. A young woman named Cedar Hawk Songmaker finds herself in the very center. The story is told in a first-person narrative from Cedar's perspective. As Cedar is four months pregnant, the book is her writing to her future child, creating what she believes will be a historical record.

Cedar was raised by her adoptive parents, who are described as "Minneapolis Liberals," Glen and Sera, but now she feels the need to meet her Ojibwe family. Cedar struggled previously with not knowing who she was and joined a Catholic Church. Now, she wants her child to feel a greater connection to their Native heritage, so she journeys to her family's reservation to meet them for the first time.

At the reservation, she meets her birth mother, Mary Potts (Sweetie), stepfather, Eddy, and half-sister Mary Potts (Little Mary.) At first, Cedar feels out of place visiting the reservation. She does not necessarily know how to feel about Sweetie and the life they live. Cedar learns about Eddy's manuscript, which is a list of reasons not to kill yourself. Later she sees Glen and Sera's car pull up. The meeting between her two sets of parents is strange for Cedar, and there is an awkwardness in the air. Cedar ends up spending the night at her biological family's house. Before bed, Sweetie and Cedar share a nice moment where Cedar reveals her pregnancy, and Sweetie tells her about her biological father.

Feeling paranoid, Cedar makes several stops to stock up on the way home from the reservation the next day. She first goes to the grocery store, then to withdraw $8,000 she had kept in what she calls an old-fashioned bank account. Making a quick stop, she decides to pick up some baby clothes and toys. Back to her end-of-the-world shopping, then picks up extensive amounts of liquor, bullets, and cigarettes.

Nervous about the future of the world, Cedar is unsure what to do but is willing to risk everything to go to a doctor's appointment and see her child. At the appointment, the doctor says many cryptic things, including: "We’ve got one."[4] He then tells Cedar they must keep her there, but after sending the technician away, he has Cedar duct tape him to a chair and run out the back way.

At home, while working on her religious newsletter, Zeal, a strange woman appears on Cedar's laptop. She refers to herself as mother and asks Cedar how she is. A few days later, the woman appears yet again. The same day Phil, her baby's father, appears at Cedar's door. He brings news that the government is trying to round up all the pregnant women, and they decide to hide out in Cedar's house. A few days later while out Cedar sees a pregnant woman get taken aggressively by police. Cedar now officially goes into hiding and no longer leaves the house, and Phil leaves to go get supplies. He returns a few days later.

Staying sequestered in the house is difficult for Cedar; mother makes several more appearances, there are many close calls of getting caught, and Phil is gone most of the time. This leads Cedar to try her best to stick firmly to a routine though she is still left with more free time than ideal.

Cedar is abducted and forced to stay in a dull hospital with other pregnant women.  Her assigned roommate, Agnes, has a defiant and aggressive manner.  She instructs Cedar to stop taking the vitamins provided by the nurses.  Cedar complies, immediately resulting in the shifting of her obscured image of a friendly and caring hospital to its harsh reality: a prison.  Soon after she is introduced, Agnes gives birth and leaves without a trace, leaving Cedar clueless about what happened to her.  

Agnes is quickly replaced with a new roommate who refuses to speak and has a mysterious manner.  Without a name to call her, Cedar refers to her as ‘spider nun’ in her diary.  Cedar realized that Spider nun did not take her vitamins either, and she spent every night unraveling provided blankets into balls of yarn.  This process became a ritual for the two roommates, stealing more blankets, unraveling, and later tying the yarn into long ropes.  

After many more nights at the hospital, Sera enters Cedar's hospital room briefly as a nurse.  Cedar is overjoyed to see her mother and the two of them become more optimistic regarding their escape plan.  Sera, unfortunately, provides Cedar with the devastating news that Phil was the one to turn Cedar into the hospital, though after being tortured for some time.  

When the makeshift blanket rope has reached the required length, the escape plan is solidified.  Minutes before escaping, a nurse named Orielee finds the rope in its hiding spot and laughs, confiscating it.  Before she can leave the room, however, Spider nun begins strangling the nurse.  She speaks for the first time to cedar asking for help.  The two roommates strangle the nurse to death.  Cedar learns that Spider nun's name is Tia Jackson.  

After the murder, Cedar and Tia climb out the window using the rope and meet Sera at the bottom of the building.  The three women are hidden in a storage area where they spend the night, the memory of the murder haunting Cedar.

Much time is spent in hiding, and a couple of relocations are arranged throughout.  Eventually, Tia is ready to go into labor.  Sera and Cedar try their best to assist in the birth and calm Tia.  After many grueling hours, Tia gives birth to a stillborn baby.  Later, Tia leaves the group, reuniting with her husband.  

Sera admits to Cedar that she wishes for her daughter to lose her baby.  To Sera, this means being freed from government control, but to Cedar, this is a devastating event and cannot believe her mother would think such a thing.

Finally, Cedar and Sera arrive at the reservation to hide, the area is much safer for her than living in the city.  The two of them stay in the Pott's house, allowing Cedar to grow closer with her biological family.  Eddy is actively involved in the reservation's politics, specifically getting land back.  After the Dawes Act of 1862, the reservation was left as only a small piece of land.  Being stuck at home all day, Cedar and Sera end up having a deep conversation, revealing a secret of Cedars identity.  She was not adopted after all, and Glen is her biological father.  This is difficult for Cedar to process and she does not know how to feel immediately.  

Cedar gets abducted a second time soon after.  She is moved into a separate hospital, one full of women forced to carry babies.  The women in the hospital are forced to deliver babies until their deaths.  This sadly becomes Cedar's future.  At the end of the book, she gives birth to a healthy boy.  Erdrich concludes the novel with Cedar talking to her newborn child, whom she cannot see in person.  She wonders when the last snowfall will occur on earth.

Control of women and babies is prevalent throughout the novel. Once evolution begins to decline, and the reproductive abilities of the human race are threatened, different governments rise to power hoping to prevent extinction. Throughout each of these regimes one thing stays constant: the need to exercise control over women.[6] Women hold the power of reproduction, and thus play a key component in the downfall of society. Laws are quickly put into place designed to capture and imprison fertile women in order to force them into being pregnant and giving birth in a controlled environment. Being a pregnant woman herself, Cedar faces the brunt of these laws firsthand, as she is imprisoned on two occasions, and even gives birth in a government facility. Cedar describes this very moment in her journal by writing, "The pushing went on forever, until, with a violence I didn't know was in me, I pushed you out…As I slipped away, someone pried apart your fist and I felt you lifted from my arms."[4] With this theme, Erdrich conveys the harsh reality women face, immediately stripped of their freedom and rights, when chaos erupts in a society.

Cedar struggles to find her sense of self, alternating between feeling special and feeling out of place. Being raised by her wealthy, white adoptive parents, Sera and Glen, and being born of a middle-class Native American mother, Cedar wrestles with who she is and where she belongs. While Sera and Glen attempt to connect Cedar to her heritage, their attempts feel superficial. For example, Cedar is given the name Cedar Songmaker, yet her birth mother names her Mary Potts. This is ironic: the sing-songy nature of Cedar's adoptive name and the rather average name given by her birth mother. Sera and Glen seem to try honoring Cedar's heritage, though Mary Potts Senior, her birth mother, pays homage by giving her a family name passed down through generations.[7] Growing up, praised for her Ojibwe, ‘uniqueness’, the lack thereof in her name is a bit disheartening: "my ethnicity was celebrated in the sheltered enclave of my adoptive Songmaker family. Native Girl! Indian Princess! …I was  rare…I always felt special, like royalty."[4] Once arriving at college, Cedar realizes that she had been put on a pedestal that existed only in her childhood. "Without my specialness, I melted."[4] In the novel's final scene, her younger sister asks what Cedar will name her baby. In the midst of digging through Little Mary's room, Cedar finds a piece of clothing with a label that reads Victoria. The decision to name her baby after something found in Little Mary's room shows Cedar incorporating her Native family into her future, though naming her baby Victoria is her individuating and making her future a combination of both worlds.

Throughout Cedar's journey, the world is facing a climate catastrophe: temperatures have risen and snow does not fall during the winter anymore. Furthermore, evolution is regressing. This unpredictable crisis in which no one seems to understand provokes panic about the future of the world as it becomes known to the public. Even the internet and television stations are taken over as pregnancy becomes a matter that needs to be controlled by the government.[6] Women are not able to reproduce in the way that they once were able to. Heavy surveillance is necessary for the government to attempt to salvage as many pregnancies as possible and any woman who is pregnant must turn herself in to be kept in observation. Cedar must navigate the world in a new light as she is in danger of these limitations placed on pregnant women being four months pregnant herself.