Her sections are brief avant-garde flashes that include recipes for cooking puffin and pilot whale and crossed-out lines revealing the Biographer’s process. Finally, Eivør Minervudottir is a (fictional) 19th-century explorer of the North Pole, the subject of the Biographer’s work. Gin, “The Mender,” is a natural healer who lives in the woods, an underground provider of herbal abortions, in more danger from the new laws than she realizes. She and the Biographer are competitive frenemies who misunderstand and resent each other even as they regularly socialize. Susan, “The Wife,” is married to another teacher at the high school, miserable with him and with domestic life in general. Mattie, “The Daughter,” is an academically gifted teenager whose best friend is already in juvenile jail for attempting a home abortion. Ro, whose chapters are labeled “The Biographer,” is a single high school teacher who's trying desperately to get pregnant before single parenthood is outlawed.

Following the current fashion for braided narratives, this story is told from five perspectives. LAW!' After the Personhood Amendment grants rights to embryos, the U.S.–Canadian border becomes a “Pink Wall.” Women crossing to seek pregnancy terminations or in vitro fertilizations are returned to the U.S. The lives of five women in a small Oregon town are affected by the outlawing of abortion and an imminent ban on single parenthood.Ī billboard on the highway to Canada reads, 'WON’T STOP ONE, / WON’T START ONE.

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas