PARABLE OF THE SOWER is the story of a young woman living with her family in a small neighborhood in California. The catch is that the community is made up of less than one dozen houses surrounded on all sides by towering walls, topped with broken glass and barbed wire, accessible by one locked gate. This is no prison, at least not in the crime and punishment sense; rather, gated communities are quite normal in the year 2024. The walls protect those who dwell within from the increasing violence and overwhelming poverty on the other side.

Lauren Olamina has lived in relative safety all of her life; rarely venturing outside of the walls of her neighborhood. Born with a condition that causes her to experience extreme empathy, she shares the physical pain of others at the sight of their suffering. As she grows older, she learns to hide her vulnerability. She also learns that her community is similarly vulnerable. Lauren lives in a sort of after-future. Remnants of the involuntarily envisioned prototype of a George Jetson-like twenty-first century exist but are overshadowed by decay. Most people get all their news from the radio, if at all. The cost of water is higher than gas and illiteracy rates are ever on the rise. Increasingly disenchanted with her father`s notion of God and religion, she begins to develop a series of simple truths composed of spare prose to make sense of her harsh reality. In time she comes to call her burgeoning philosophy Earthseed. When the walls of her world come tumbling down, she must put Earthseed to practice in order to survive.

With SOWER, Butler crafts a morality tale of sorts; offering a glimpse of a future currently foreshadowed by our present. The success of this book lies primarily in its plausibility. By no means is it inconceivable that California will be adversely affected by Global warming, home to an undereducated and unskilled labor force, and divvied up by a handful of multinational corporations. Her storytelling is fast paced, unblinking and imaginative without sacrificing character or plot development. She provides an interesting examination of spirituality and how it is shaped by human need. In addition, Butler creates an unforgettable heroine in Lauren Olamina.

Of all the work that she has published over the years, PARABLE OF THE SOWER has met with the most critical acclaim. With creative clarity and startling insight, Butler blurs the line between today`s news headlines and tomorrow`s undefined future.