This was an interesting sequel to The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, which I read last year, but apparently never wrote a review for. It starts a few years after the first book ends. Lauren and her husband, Bancole, have settled down on his land and started a community they call Acorn. The community has grown as they’ve taken in stragglers and orphans. People are not required to believe in Earthseed as a condition of staying at Acorn, but they are all exposed to Earthseed because Lauren won’t shut up about it, and many of them do come to believe, although a few are still skeptical.
One of the most remarkable things about this book was that Butler predicted an extremely right-wing president whose campaign tagline is, ”Make America Great Again.” Tagline aside, there are some major differences between Trump and Jared, including the fact that Jared is actually religious, quotes the Bible, and seems to believe the BS he spouts. But they both urge religious extremists and white supremacists to act violently.
Jared’s supporters call themselves ”Christian Americans” and start doing all sorts of awful things that Jared says he condemns, but does nothing to prosecute.
One of the awful things they do is attack Acorn, separate the men and women, and enslave all the members. A few people are killed in the attack, including Bancole. Their daughter, Larkin, is stolen and Lauren is not told what happened to her.
After about a year and a half the slaves get a lucky break and manage to kill their enslavers and escape. Lauren tells everyone they’re better off splitting up. She decides that Acorn is dead, even though Earthseed lives on.
She starts searching for Larkin, having been told she was adopted by a ”good, Christian family,” but without any idea as to which family or where or what name she might be using now.
I don’t think she really gives up looking for Larkin, but America is a big country, and she knows her life will only be so long. After a while Earthseed starts to niggle at her and she starts to preach again, at first just to one person at a time, but then someone convinces her to publish Earthseed: The Book of the Living for free online and she quickly develops a following and starts speaking at universities all over the country. But she still fails to find her daughter, and since the book doesn’t cover that period of Lauren’s life, I have to wonder if Larkin is right in asserting that her mother stopped looking for her.
Unlike The Parable of the Sower, only part of this book is told from Lauren’s perspective. We also get to hear from Larkin, who was raised by ”good, Christian parents” who had no love for her or each other. Instead, they constantly compare her to their dead daughter, who they make out to have been perfect. They don’t even tell Larkin she’s adopted.
Larkin leaves as soon as she’s old enough to live on her own, even though she’s told living on her own as a woman means living in sin and she should not expect her parents or any ”decent” family to take her in.
Fortunately, Larkin manages to make a living creating what are called ”dream mask scenarios,” which sounds a lot like she managed to make a living as a writer – if not a novelist, then some kind of TV or movie writer, or even a writer for video game manufacturers. Butler never clearly explains what a ”dream mask” is, since the books are ostensibly ”records” meant for people in Butler’s imagined version of the mid-to-late-21st century.
Most of the book is written from Lauren’s perspective, but unlike The Parable of the Sower, we also get commentary on much of what happened from Larkin, who views her mother as a flawed human rather than as some sort of heaven-sent prophet. She points out her mother’s mistakes and flaws, and even questions her mother’s love for her.
At the same time, Larkin is not exactly unbiased. She didn’t meet Lauren until she was in her 30s, by which point her mind had been plenty poisoned against Lauren, not only from the media, which labeled her a cult leader, but from Lauren’s own brother, Mark. Mark found Larkin as a child, knew Lauren was looking for her (had asked for his help in looking for her), and had lied to Larkin about what happened to her parents and how she ended up getting adopted into a loveless family.
How Mark could have believed she was better off with people she left the first chance she got, rather than with her own mother is a mystery. Then again, Mark’s blind spots when it comes to Christian America had already been well documented.
What I really don’t understand is how Larkin could have continued to be so devoted to him even after she found out how he had lied to her, especially since he admitted it had been for purely selfish reasons. But she had said she was half in love with him when she met him, and for years he was the only real family she knew, and the only person who was ever kind to her, and that can make people overlook a lot.