Cedar Hawk Songmaker, the main character in Louise Erdrich’s near-future dystopia, was originally named Mary Potts after her Ojibwe birth mother. Her lyrical surname is of British origin and comes from her adoptive parents, Minneapolis liberals Sera and Glen Songmaker. Meanwhile her forename reflects their celebration of her ethnicity, as Cedar recalls: “Native girl! Indian Princess! An Ojibwe, Chippewa. Anishinaabe.” A young pregnant woman living in a world that is “running backwards”, she is a neat embodiment of the complexity of race, identity and the matriarchal line.
Adoptions into and out of nuclear and extended families are a recurring theme in Erdrich’s novels; love is a gift that does not depend on blood, but blood ties are nevertheless hard to break. Here, Cedar’s baby is due on the 25 December, and she is determined to seek out her birth parents and discover their medical history. And with good reason. Evolution is reversing; animals, birds and insects are gradually reverting to their prehistoric forms. Humanoid babies look increasingly less human, live births are dwindling, women are dying in childbirth and “perfect” children are becoming rare.
Erdrich's storytelling and political insight make this a new classic of the genre
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