9780062742384
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Future Home of the Living God audiobook

  • By: Louise Erdrich
  • Narrator: Louise Erdrich
  • Category: Fiction, Political
  • Length: 10 hours 44 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: November 14, 2017
  • Language: English
  • (19982 ratings)
(19982 ratings)
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Future Home of the Living God Audiobook Summary

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.

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Future Home of the Living God Audiobook Narrator

Louise Erdrich is the narrator of Future Home of the Living God audiobook that was written by Louise Erdrich

About the Author(s) of Future Home of the Living God

Louise Erdrich is the author of Future Home of the Living God

Future Home of the Living God Full Details

Narrator Louise Erdrich
Length 10 hours 44 minutes
Author Louise Erdrich
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date November 14, 2017
ISBN 9780062742384

Subjects

The publisher of the Future Home of the Living God is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Fiction, Political

Additional info

The publisher of the Future Home of the Living God is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062742384.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Angela M

October 19, 2017

I woke up thinking about this book and even though I had finished reading it, I wasn't ready to leave it behind. I haven't been able to get it out of my head enough to engage in another book. This captivating story is beautifully written as we expect from Louise Erdrich. To those who hold dear Erdrich's stories filled with her love of her Native American heritage, I would urge you to not shy away from this book because you think she may have moved that aside in what may seem like different kind of story. In this warning of an apocalyptic world, she has not left it behind, rather it is front and center in the character of Cedar Hawk Songmaker and her family. Cedar has lived a comfortable, happy life with a caring couple who adopted her at birth. She hasn't made any attempts to find her birth parents until she finds herself pregnant and wants to find out if there is anything in their medical history that she should know to protect her unborn child. As the story unfolds, she has to do so much more to protect herself and her baby in this time of chaos - with seemingly backward evolution, a government that has fallen apart, and the hunt for pregnant women. Like many expectant mother's, she keeps tract of her baby's development and lovingly speaks to the baby in this intimate first person narrative, a letter to her child. Her journey to motherhood in this chilling world where she has to hide, to escape being caught is haunting and harrowing. A gripping, scary story as she makes her way, unsure of who to trust. In spite of not knowing what the future holds for her and her baby, what she does know for sure is the love that surrounds her. I loved the relationships and the characters in this story - from Cedar to her parents , Sera and Glen, her biological mother, Mary Potts and Mary's husband Eddy to her postman Hiro. My rating is 4.5 stars because I needed to know more in the end, but I have to give it 5 stars for the thought provoking and beautiful work that Erdrich gives us. I reluctantly admit that this is only the second book that I have read by Erdrich, but I plan to change that soon. I received an advanced copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.

Will

December 01, 2021

In the beginning was the word -– John 1:1 The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. The Word manifests itself in every creature.--Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) A car passes me bearing the bumper sticker Come the Rapture Can I Have Your Car. Oh, good, not everybody’s getting ready to ascend. I love driving. Thinking while I shoot along. If it is true that every particle that I can see and not see, and all that is living and perhaps unloving too, is trimming its sails and coming about and heading back to port, what does that mean? Where are we bound? Is it any different in fact, from where we were going in the first place? Perhaps all of creation from the coddling moth to the elephant was just a grandly detailed thought that God was engrossed in elaborating upon, when suddenly God fell asleep. We are an idea, then. Maybe God has decided that we are an idea not worth thinking about anymore. Cedar Hawk Songmaker, 26, is writing a journal to her unborn child, very much hoping there will be a world left in which he or she can read it. This is a real concern, as the world appears to be going haywire. Plants and creatures, including people, are not breeding true. Giving birth, itself, has become a dodgy proposition. And who knows what will emerge?The story follows Cedar, who had been adopted as an infant by white liberal city folks, through connecting with her Native American biological mother’s family, attempting to see her pregnancy through to term, and attempting to maintain her safety and freedom in a world where danger and attempts at intrusive control dominate.Louise Erdrich - image from The Daily BeastIn the beginning was the title. Caren Wilton, in a 2006 interview with Erdrich for a New Zealand site, Noted, reports Erdrich saying she started with a title taken from a sign she had seen in an empty field: The Future Home of the Living God. It was to be a diversion from the more historical novels she is known for. She had a somewhat different focus in this early vision of the book. Actually, it's about the postal system, says Erdrich...Perhaps I look dubious, because she starts to laugh. "It really is, I'm not making that up. I love the intricacies of the postal system. In the book, the US postal system decides to leave the government, and they make a compact with the National Guard so that the mail continues to be delivered." At some point she opted to write something else. Her next adult book was The Plague of Doves. She got a bit of a prod to return to this one in 2016. According to CTV News, Louise Erdrich, speaking at a HarperCollins dinner, recalled how Trump's win drove her to take another look at a novel she had set aside years earlier, "Future Home of the Living God." The book…tells of a society in which women's rights and democracy itself are endangered, among other things. It is not clear how much of the book she had already written prior to this, and what changes she made to what she had already done.Dystopian visions abound these days. It is impossible, in considering this novel, not to summon to mind The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s (and television’s) concerns about human fertility, risky science, a planet rebelling against the outrages of a waste-based society, and women being restored to a subservient place in the culture with extreme prejudice. Is the dramatic decline in fertility in both Atwood’s and Erdrich’s books nature objecting to what homo sapiens has done to its home world? Is it a specific natural reaction to scientific overreach, an experiment or project gone terribly wrong? Among other reasons, the meanderings here give voice to the notion that heightened intelligence is not a particularly good quality to have in a species looking to stick around for a long time. Maybe being the brightest bulb as a species means burning out the fastest.Motherhood is an obvious stream here. Beginning with the opening epigraph (noted at the top of the review), from Hildegaard of Bingen, manifesting with a plethora of characters named Mary, and including an internet-based Big Brother sort named Mother. Cedar is connecting with her birth mother after 26 years of separation. Is Cedar more from her adoptive parents or more from Mary Potts, her bio-mom? There is a parallel theme that looks at God and religion. Cedar is a convert to Catholicism, in fact even reads nerd-level religious journals, and engages in an ongoing internal dialogue about the meaning of what she sees in the more universal sense. A Native American saint, Kateri (like Cedar, an [adoptee]…who converted to Catholicism as a teen) has been sighted. Where do we come from and where are we going, as individuals, and as a species? The notion, noted in the largest of the review-opening quotes, persists throughout, and is indistinguishable from the meandering thoughts on God and the nature of existenceThis is not a typical Louise Erdrich novel, at least not judging by her most recent work, anyway. The story-telling is much more linear. No major time jumps to speak of, and the action remains focused on Cedar’s experiences. Also, while she is fond of magical realism, this has a more science-fictiony sheath within which to consider existential questions than the magical realism historical work she usually favors. It is definitely fun, in a dark way, when extinct creatures again roam the earth as humanity is de-volving. Don’t think too hard about how those beasties might have come to be, how they might have been raised to adulthood. Devolution is happening. Don’t sweat the details.Cedar is a mostly sympathetic character, so one can relate to her struggle, as one could to Atwood’s heroine. Enough of the details of this world make sense to keep us in the story. Things like Native Americans looking at an opportunity to reclaim ancient land, and religious extremists using their organizational skills to take over and institute an autocratic theocracy (a redundancy, and probably a Mike Pence wet dream) make sense, particularly given the 20th and 21st century experience of failing states across the world. The details of societal devolution are fascinating.I had one gripe in particular, a character who I felt was given short shrift. A man, who had been helping many women escape the authorities, gives up some information under torture, as I expect most of us would, is then seen as an enemy instead of another victim, and is turned away. Hmmm. This is not comparable to her recent masterpiece-level novels, The Round House, LaRose, The Night Watchman, and The Sentence, but, overall, Future Home of the Living God a pretty good read. You can take my word for it.Review first Posted – 12/1/2017Published - 11/14/2017=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal and FB pages. Erdrich's personal site redirects to the site Birchbark Books. She owns the store.Other Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed-----2021 - The Sentence-----2020 - The Night Watchman-----2016 - LaRose -----2010 - Shadow Tag-----2012 - The Round House -----2008 - The Plague of Doves -----2005 - The Painted DrumInterviews-----Paris Review – Winter 2010 - Louise Erdrich, The Art of Fiction No. 208 by Lisa Halliday-----Noted – April 2006 my link text - Caren WiltonOther-----Alchetron - Louise Erdrich - a nice history of Erdrich and her work----- Flowers for Socrates - November 2016 - Word Cloud: Windigo - this blog entry intersperses poems by Erdrich with bits of her history. A snippet of one in particular caught my interest, given her fondness for the surreal, from Advice to Myself Accept new forms of lifeand talk to the deadwho drift in though the screened windows, who collectpatiently on the tops of food jars and books. -----December 28, 2018 - A Woman’s Rights - a collection of articles that look at the nation-wide right-wing attack on abortion rights. Serious stuff, worth checking out

Jen CAN

November 28, 2017

Erdrich is another one of my favourite authors. LaRose was exquisite. Now this read is of a dystopian flavour, and call me a heretic, but I'm not truly a believer...That is, until Erdrich spun a tail so rich she has converted or bewitched me. Either way, I'm a believer. Or so the song goes.Cedar, 4 months pregnant, locates her biological Ojibwa parents during a time of flux when the world is changing. Pregnant women are corralled into hospitals -babies removed from them. Cedar hides until her due date in various locations. She has both parents working at hiding her so she can remain with her child. And the love that surrounds this unborn child, prevails.This was on the verge of being a thriller. One where I wasn't exactly sure what was going on and it didn't really matter as I just went with it.Great characters, plot development all them wholesome good things that make a good story great. Erdrich's phenomenal descriptive writing of snow, rocks (yes!) and the ominous evil of Mother. I lived and breathed it.I keep saying I don't like the dystopian genre, but this is the 3rd one I've read (Bird box & Good Morning, Midnight) to convince me, I must be in denial. 4 ⭐️

J.L.

February 13, 2022

“The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don’t know what is happening.”I've read several of Louise Erdrich's novels before this one Love Medicine, Beet Queen, Tracks and The Painted Drum; however, while Future Home of the Living God does have the same lyrical quality of Erdrich's other works, it is very different. Earlier works, and I'm especially thinking of Tracks, contain a tangible sense of danger to her Native protagonists and their tribes. This time, everyone is in danger. Future Home of the Living God is set in a near future dystopia where evolution has possibly reversed course. The book is narrated by Cedar Hawk Songmaker in the form of letters to her unborn child. In this turbulent period of change which some imagine to be the end of time, she attempts to come to terms with her own identity and carve out a place for her child. A subsequent government crackdown on pregnant women and Cedar Hawk's imprisonment had tones of The Handmaid's Tale, but this was a compelling and intriguing story in its own right. 3.5 stars.

Elyse

December 08, 2017

Cedar Hawk Songmaker grew up in a liberal home to hippie white parents, Glen and Sera, in Minneapolis. Exceptions were made for Cedar’s adoption — bypassing the Indian Child welfare Act. Cedar’s birth mother was Mary Potts, an Ojibwe mother. Glen and Sera didn’t practice any religion - but when a very pregnant Cedar was 26 years old she turned to Catholicism looking for answers and family connections. She also was wanted to meet Mary Potts....seeking as much information she could to provide for her unborn child. For an entire year - prior she knew Mary had reached out to her through a letter, but Cedar was too angry at the time, wanting nothing to do with her. But now with a purpose bigger than just herself — she was desperate to meet her biological parents. While 4 months pregnant, Cedar travels north to meet her Ojibwe family....life is becoming more challenging- coming undone: a type of mysterious reverse evolution, political breakdowns, winters without snow, and natural disasters. Glen and Sera, her adoptive parents, tried to warn Cedar about the imminent frightening conditions. And this was - for me - the first sign of this being a dystopia novel. “Every service system seems controlled by a separate group. Every city service negotiates with other services. People are forming their own civilian militias, their own rescue posses, hiding pregnant women. Nobody says where of course. The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don’t know what is happening”. As dystopian novels go...this book has enough ‘relationship’ scenes with characters to really love - I never felt too far off in ‘outer limits’. And.......if I were pregnant- I sure as hell wouldn’t want the government to get their hands on me. Cedar and her husband Phil didn’t either!As an ‘emotional’ read ... I liked this book .....mostly written as a journal entry from Cedar to her unborn child. As an intellectual read: creation, God, biological apocalypse: some of it went right over my head. As for Louise Erdich..... it goes without saying, she is an incredible talent! - Immensely gifted writer! Thank you Will, ( who stayed with us this summer and we had a blast), his wife, and Harbercollins for the gift of sending me this book with a box of 5 others! Thanks Will... very sweet ... to all of you!

Gerhard

September 07, 2022

... there is nothing that one human being will not do to another. We need a god who sides with the wretched. One willing to share misery.Louise Erdrich is one of those writers I have been meaning to read for ages, but just somehow never got around to. Then I rediscovered ‘Future Home’ on my ‘to read’ list and was curious enough to give it a bash (in spite of all the other books I am reading simultaneously.) Well, suffice it to say I finished it over a single weekend, it that was engrossing and gripping.Erdrich is a consummate writer. Her prose is muscular and yet graceful at the same time, delicate when needed and often packing an unexpected emotional wallop. The nature writing here is simply exquisite. I was also quite surprised at the numerous wry observations and laugh-out loud humour, which made a very bleak book that much more bearable.And maybe you have to plumb such darkness in order to offer the promise of hope and light. This was originally published in 2017, not only in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic, but more importantly, I think, seen against the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade.Cedar comments at one point: “I have seen a young woman in labour endure more pain than Christ did in his three-hour ordeal on the cross.” It is a provocative statement that, in the current political climate, probably would have gotten this book and author into a lot of trouble from right-wing zealots. But it starkly underscores the miracle and suffering of childbirth.Here I am thinking of one particular scene about a baby being born that seems to go on forever. It is one of the most visceral pieces of writing I have ever read. It is not a spoiler to reveal that the baby does not survive (few do in this dystopian world where the evolutionary clock has been mysteriously set backwards.)Cedar wakes up much later that night after an exhausted slumber to hear frantic rustling in the dark … she then sees a seething carpet of rats on the floor and on the table where the remains of the baby had been placed in its swaddling. It is one of many truly horrific and heart-breaking scenes in this quietly extraordinary novel.

Chris

April 16, 2018

Once more, Louise Erdrich dazzled me. The novel of a world quite literally devolving. . .evolving backwards. . .and with frightening speed was haunting and beautifully evoked. And Cedar, the young woman who may (or may not) be carrying one of the few remaining "original" human babies, is a courageous and inspiring creation. Pair this one with "The Handmaid's Tale" for a wrenching literary double-header.

Bam cooks the books ;-)

November 27, 2017

In this dystopian novel, Cedar Hawk Songmaker is four months pregnant at the end of the world as we know it. Evolution has come to a screeching halt and is seemingly rapidly reversing. Society is falling apart; food is scarce; nobody knows exactly what is happening. The US government has been replaced by something called the Church of the New Constitution and they are actively rounding up all pregnant women to study them and their fetuses. We learn all this through journal entries that Cedar is writing for her baby so that the child will someday know what was happening while Cedar was carrying him. The story is filled with the love of a mother for her unborn child: her protectiveness and worry, her hopes and dreams for the future. Cedar herself was adopted and raised by a liberal Minneapolis couple, Sera and Glen, who are Buddhists, but as a rebellious young adult, Cedar has turned to Catholicism, studying and writing articles for a magazine she publishes called Zeal. She is particularly interested in Kateri Tekakwitha, the patron saint of the Ojibwa people, the tribe of her birth mother. When she first learns she's pregnant, she decides to seek out her birth mother, Mary Potts, on the Ojibwa reservation, to learn more about her baby's genetic background. There she also meets her grandmother, sister and step-father, who is writing articles on reasons not to kill oneself. After returning to her own home, her baby's father Phil moves in with her to protect her in the rather hopeless desire to keep her pregnancy hidden. Once in 'the system,' Cedar is driven to do things she never thought possible to protect her unborn child. 'That my body is capable of building a container for the human spirit inspired in me the will to survive. To bear this child, I will go through whatever pain I must. This is the Incarnation. The spirit gives flesh meaning.' So beautifully written!Throughout the story, there is an air of mystery, since we do not know exactly what is going on in the world at large. Most communication has been cut off: no cellphones, no tv news, etc. And there are unanswered questions in Cedar's own life: like who is her birth father? What has happened to Phil? Cedar is also kept in the dark about the condition of her baby; they will not tell her what the many ultrasounds and tests they perform reveal. But Cedar is convinced she is carrying a boy child with all the symbolism that involves with her religious views. She speculates on whether her child will ever be able to read her journals. Will he have the capacity to learn, to speak? And finally, Erdrich's description of snow is just exquisite. Will our environment warm enough that someday we will no longer be able to experience the cold pleasures of snow?

Maxwell

November 15, 2017

I really enjoyed the blend of speculative and literary fiction in this book! Also haven't read any Erdrich before, but I've been meaning too—and I will definitely pick up more from her. Definitely check this one out if the premise intrigues you.

Claire

December 27, 2018

I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous going into this. I’m a big Erdrich fan, but this novel has had very mixed reviews. Is it Erdrich’s best work? No, but it’s a good book, that I think deserves more credit than it’s received. It’s suffered I think from unreasonable comparisons to Atwood, and to Erdrich’s other work, none of which it is directly comparable to. Future Home for the Living God is a near-term dystopia, and important distinction because of its influence on purpose. This is not a novel about a world far removed from our own. Rather it is a novel about our world, and what could easily happen to it, in our lives, in our time, under the influence of religion and climate change. Much of the criticism of this novel, has focused on the weak world building, vague context, and lack of clarity about whether evolution has in fact been reversed. For me, that didn’t really matter, it wasn’t what the novel was about. Instead, this is a novel about how easily our lives, and the rules, expectations, laws that govern it can be perverted in the face of crisis; imagined or otherwise.Ultimately I think this novel does what it sets out to. It is an exploration of human society in crisis, an examination of what makes us who we are as a species and as individuals, it’s a novel of family, faith and human connection. It was generally well-paced, if a little uneven at times. Erdrich once again captured my imagination and my concern with this compelling read.

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