53 pages • 1 hour read
Louise ErdrichFuture Home of the Living God
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, October 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, October 19 Summary
Cedar and her roommate prepare for their last day in the hospital, planning an evening escape. During a surprise inspection, Orielee finds the hidden rope. The roommate attacks Orielee, breaking her silence to ask Cedar for help. Cedar helps her roommate strangle Orielee to death. They store the body in the closet and then wait, eventually overhearing another nurse assume that Orielee has left early to celebrate her birthday.
The silent roommate introduces herself as Tia Jackson. Her feigned silence has allowed her to eavesdrop on nurses, and she learned that the babies are taken to study, while the people who were held in the former prison were mostly killed. Some, however, were enlisted as bounty hunters, one of whom captured Tia. Before the capture, Tia was a textile designer. She does not know the whereabouts of her husband.
Tia and Cedar spend the day nervously preparing. Finally, they block the door, and Cedar breaks the window with a hammer. They tie the rope to the bed and throw it out of the window, climbing out and down the rope. Sera appears and ushers the women into a recycling truck, which drives away from the hospital to a recycling facility, where the driver Shawn takes the women to a hiding place. As Shawn outlines the plan to get the women to Canada, Tia says that she is staying in the United States to find her husband. As much as Sera begs Tia to change her mind, Tia refuses.
Shawn leads the women to a secret room in the recycling facility. When they are alone, Tia admits to Cedar that she wants to stay with her. They talk about Tia’s husband and how Tia was caught. Tia asks about Phil, but Cedar does not know what to say.
Part 2, October 20 Summary
Cedar reflects on how writing in the diary allows her to remain connected to her life and her unborn child. The pages are filled with scraps of paper, memories, and observations.
Tia wakes and her water breaks. Cedar leaves her hiding place and finds Sera, who guides Tia through the labor, though she seems concerned that the birth may be premature. Shawn appears and tells Tia that he will carry her into the caves behind the facility, as he is worried that the recycling plant may be raided.
They travel along a path toward a house that has a secret door into the labyrinth of caves. They crawl through tight, dark tunnels and reach a small room carved out of a cave. Sera prepares equipment for Tia’s baby. As the contractions intensify, Tia lashes out. She cuts Cedar’s face and kicks Sera, before falling asleep. When she sees the aggression, Cedar worries that something is going physically wrong during women’s recent childbirths, but Sera assures her that Tia’s behavior is “normal” (118).
Hours pass as Tia drifts in and out of consciousness. Sera encourages Tia to push but the baby seems stuck. More hours pass and the baby slowly, slowly begins to arrive. Cedar catches the newborn as Sera cuts the umbilical cord. Cedar is convinced that the baby is stillborn. Sera tries to breathe life into the little girl to no avail. She hands Tia her stillborn daughter. Cedar falls to her knees, cradling the unborn baby inside her.
Part 2, October 21 Summary
Cedar wakes the next day and watches Sera and Tia. She marvels that everything (including the bloody medical supplies) was cleaned so quickly, but then is horrified to see a heaving mass of rats gnawing at the bag containing all the contaminated items. She sees the rats chewing on the swaddling cloth wrapped around Tia’s stillborn daughter. Cedar clears away the rats by stomping on them and laying the bodies in a protective circle around the women.
She falls asleep and wakes to find the rats’ bodies gone. Cedar notices Tia’s baby is gone and assumes that Shawn or Sera must have buried her, but she thinks of the relief Tia must feel, now that she does not need to worry for her life. The women plan the next part of their escape. Sera has contacted Tia’s husband Clay, who is now waiting to accompany her to California. Cedar marvels at Tia’s calm but envies her friend’s departure. As they wait in the dark, Cedar asks her mother about Phil.
Sera explains that Phil “knew what was happening” (123) and that the authorities would raid the house to take Cedar away. Already, he had been sheltering three women in the church basement. When the authorities caught those women, they then apprehended Phil and tortured him into revealing Cedar’s location. Sera asks Cedar not to blame Phil for betraying her.
Part 2, October 23 Summary
Sera and Cedar help Tia out of the tiny room toward Shawn’s truck. They will drop Tia at a designated spot before continuing to Canada. A police car pulls them over. Sera throws a tarp over the women while Shawn tries to reason with the authorities. Shawn returns and reveals that the men were friendly, wanting him to collect another pregnant woman as soon as possible. First, they drop off Tia with her husband. Cedar wants to bid an emotional farewell but cannot find the right words to express her feelings.
They reach the Minneapolis Post Office and sneak through the checkpoints. Friends lead Cedar through the building, into the lower levels. Cedar hides in a small closet, where she sits with Sera and falls asleep. She wakes up a few hours later, and Sera explains that she thinks the escape from the hospital doomed Tia’s baby. She believes that Cedar will not face the same fate, but she cannot hide her fear and admits that she wishes “the baby had never happened” (128). Infuriated, Cedar responds by saying she wishes she had never been adopted. Sera falls silent and Cedar knows that she has gone too far. Cedar slumps onto the cushions on the floor. Sera cries. Feeling guilty, Cedar weeps with her mother.
Later, Cedar examines herself in a mirror for the first time in many weeks, astonished by the changes to her body. Afterward, they load into a new truck with the help of a man Cedar recognizes as her former mailman. They hide in a secret compartment in the mail truck.
Part 2, October 24 Summary
The truck travels north, and Cedar tries to finish the last issue of her Catholic newsletter. She pens a letter to her subscribers, relating what she has learned from her own strange pregnancy to the experiences of the Virgin Mary. She urges her subscribers to treat whatever babies who are born as though they have souls and are fully human, even if they might be devolved in appearance.
Cedar tries not to fall asleep, because she’s been having nightmares about Orielee’s death. Distraught, Cedar feels compelled to confess the violence, so she tells Sera what happened. Sera is barely conscious but stirs when Cedar asks her about the nature of hell. Sera responds that hell, in her opinion, is “what’s happening right now, here on earth” (134). Cedar senses her mother’s sadness so changes the subject. Cedar assures Sera that the pregnancy has convinced her that “things aren’t really going backward” (135) and that she feels a strange, indefinable joy in existence.
Part 2, October 19-24 Analysis
These parts of the novel emphasize the vulnerability experienced in pregnancy—whether through the mother’s limited capacities, the tremendous medical risks already inherent to childbirth, the psychologically harrowing prospect of a stillborn birth, or the unwilling invitation to relentless governmental predation. Cedar’s compromised physical condition is further magnified by the dynamic of the dystopian setting, and the danger is dramatized through trials that even a nonpregnant person would find traumatic: imprisonment, profound violations of bodily autonomy, desperate life-and-death strategizing, murder under duress, close escape from one dire circumstance to another, and the precarious navigation through a claustrophobic cave system.
Both the physical and psychological difficulties of pregnancy are then rearticulated with distinct tragedy when Tia goes into labor. She, Cedar, and Sera are in the caves, lacking access to even the most basic medical facilities. Tia’s labor is also painful, and Cedar can only watch with horror, briefly glimpsing the pain that awaits her in several months’ time. Sera’s pragmatism resurfaces, and Cedar must follow suit. Cedar assists with the delivery, observing the endurance of an agonizing childbirth. The experience prepares her, hardening her against future anguish and reminding her of what she is fighting to protect.
Tia survives the hardship of labor only to give birth to a stillborn daughter. Cedar is vicariously traumatized, and she struggles to come to terms with the event. She wants to scream, especially as she watches Sera desperately trying to breathe life into the baby—to no avail. The abysmal experience escalates nightmarishly when Cedar wakes in the night and finds a horde of rats gnawing toward the corpse. In this moment, Cedar finally snaps. She takes her mother’s boots and stomps on the rats until she is exhausted, then lines the rat corpses in a protective circle around the sleeping women. The sudden violent outburst is a release of the culminated terror and agony Cedar has endured so far. While she has tried to be practical and mimic Sera’s careful approach to everything, the rats are such a violent, dehumanizing intrusion that she cannot restrain herself. After the outburst, Cedar falls back asleep. Neither before nor after this instance is she so raw in her emotional display. The death of the baby, and her horror that the pain she has endured might be for nothing, are too much to bear. By killing the rats, Cedar unleashes the fears and frustrations that have accumulated over the course of months.
Throughout all the tribulation of her journey, Cedar’s religious faith sustains her, and this is given recurrent expression throughout the novel. She prays, ponders her faith, and even maintains a Catholic publication. A more pervasive theological tenor, however, appears in other key elements of the story, the most resounding instance of which is not only Cedar’s birth name, Mary—but also the fact that her biological mother, grandmother, and little sister all share the name as well. Cedar’s birth name connects her to the Blessed Virgin, elevating the experience of pregnancy to the status of spiritual vocation or even divine appointment. Earlier in the novel, Cedar refers to her baby’s father as an “angel” (26) and indeed, Phil wore an angelic costume for a Christmas play, when he and Cedar had sex. The theatrical tryst is likely an allusion to the Annunciation, the biblical narrative of the angel Gabriel visiting the virgin to tell her that God has chosen her as the mother of the coming Christ (Cedar’s baby is eventually born on Christmas day). Cedar’s connection to the Blessed Virgin gives the novel’s title, Future Home of the Living God, what may be its most central significance, and a core theme—the paradoxically blessed affliction of pregnancy—is put on unprecedented display as Cedar and Sera find themselves in the urgent role of midwives.
As this part of the novel draws to a close, however, a purgatorial element emerges. Even though Orielee’s murder was committed under extraordinary duress, Cedar longs for confession as though it is a sacrament that will grant absolution. She approaches Sera (the makeshift priest or confessor) and after confessing her “sin” she asks Sera about the nature of hell. When Sera replies that she believes hell is “what’s happening right now, here on earth” (134), there is a further allusion to penance and purgation—and the urgent need for salvation.
Related Titles
By Louise Erdrich
