Future home of the living god A novel

PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by Caroline Fraser. (Metropolitan/Holt, $35.) This thoroughly researched biography of the "Little House" author perceptively captures Wilder's extraordinary life and legacy, offering fresh interpretations of Western American history along the way. EMPRESS OF THE EAST: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire, by Leslie Peirce. (Basic, $32.) Peirce tells the remarkable story of Roxelana, a 16th-century Christian woman in Suleiman the Magnificent's harem who achieved unprecedented power and changed the nature of the Ottoman government. MRS. OSMOND, by John Banville. (Knopf, $27.95.) Banville's sequel to Henry James's novel "Portrait of a Lady," faithful to the master's style and story, follows Isabel Archer back to Rome and the possible end of her marriage. THE REPORTER'S KITCHEN: Essays, by Jane Kramer. (St. Martin's, $26.99.) In a delectable collection of culinary profiles, book reviews and reminiscences, the longtime New Yorker correspondent shows how she approaches life through food and food through life. FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD, by Louise Erdrich. (HarperCollins, $28.99.) What if human beings are neither inevitable nor ultimate? That's the premise of Erdrich's fascinating new novel, which describes a world where evolution is running backward and the future of civilization is in doubt. THE DAWN WATCH: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff. (Penguin Press, $30.) Conrad explored the frontiers of a globalized world at the turn of the last century. Jasanoff uses Conrad's novels and his biography in order to tell the history of that moment, one that mirrors our own. THE DAWN OF DETROIT: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, by Tiya Miles. (The New Press, $27.95.) This rich and surprising book begins in the early 18th century, when the French controlled Detroit and most slaves were both Native American and female. THIS IS THE PLACE: Women Writing About Home, edited by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters. (Seal Press, paper, $16.99.) For these writers, home is where we are most ourselves - our mother tongue, our homeland, our people or just one person. JAMES WRIGHT: A Life in Poetry, by Jonathan Blunk. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $40.) Blunk illuminates the influences and obsessions of the ecstatic, troubled Wright and reveals him to be a lot like his poems: brilliant, intense and equally likely to soar or faceplant. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Twenty-six-year-old, four-months-pregnant Cedar Hawk Songmaker was adopted by Minneapolis liberals but has recently reconnected with her extended Ojibwe birth family. Reunion notwithstanding, the world is in dystopic collapse-evolution is in rapid reverse, the Church of the New Constitution has usurped control, the human race is imploding-and Cedar's determined to record the tumult for her unborn child. Her fertile womb makes her a target, as pregnant women are hunted and imprisoned; protecting her baby becomes a desperate race against time. Begun in 2001 (according to the acknowledgments) and completed in spring 2017 (revealed in the introduction), the interrupted incubation might explain the unfinished characterizations and disjointed story lines; only -Erdrich's richly nuanced reading improves the uneven narrative. VERDICT The rediscovered popularity of womb dystopia will surely fuel interest in Erdrich's Future; libraries should be prepared to provide multi-format access to the author's substantial audiences. ["This chilling speculative fiction is perfect for readers seeking the next Handmaid's Tale": LJ 9/15/17 review of the Harper hc.]-Terry Hong, -Smithsonian -BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.