

After this visit, Cedar goes to her first ultrasound appointment. She is slightly less impressed with the fact that the Potts own a gas station called the Superpumper, as she always imagined them living more exciting and meaningful lives. Cedar also meets her teenage delinquent half-sister, Little Mary Potts, and Sweetie's boyfriend Eddy, a depressive Ivy League graduate who is writing a book as a way to distract himself from his suicidal thoughts. Cedar witnesses Sweetie convince the tribal council to erect a shrine honoring Kateri Tekakwitha, the Native American Catholic saint. On the reservation, Cedar is pleased to discover that Mary “Sweetie” Potts, her birth mother, shares her Catholic faith. Cedar, who is a Native American adopted at birth by Glen and Sera Songmaker, two liberal Buddhist hippies, chooses this time to visit the nearby Ojibwe reservation and meet her birth mother. She explains that an apocalypse is underway involving the reversal of evolution, and that authorities believe this situation could lead to difficulties in human reproduction. The protagonist of Future Home of the Living God is Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a 26-year-old pregnant woman from Minneapolis who is narrating the story as a journal she plans to give to her unborn child. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Erdrich, Louise.
