Eve

by C.E. Rowland

For five years, every woman on Earth faced a bitter save herself with a vaccine that would render her sterile or ensure the propagation of the human species by risking infection with a deadly global plague.The release of a new vaccine, free from that terrible side effect, is met with a sense of collective exuberance. For the first time in half a decade, the survivors can begin to imagine a future for humanity. That future, however, relies on the few women who did not choose self-preservation, those who went unvaccinated and now represent the only viable option for a next generation.Fifteen-year-old Nasim is one of those Eves.

338 pages, Paperback

Published February 19, 2018

About the author

C. E. Rowland is a writer and chemist who enjoys hiking and trekking, playing ice hockey, and keeping solitary bees.

Reviews

[Audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book establishes an all too plausible dystopian future several decades from now in which a hastily developed vaccine produced to combat a rapidly spreading and highly lethal pandemic, had the unfortunate side effect of rendering human female recipients permanently sterile. By the time a second generation vaccine without the sterility side effect was developed, most child-bearing women had already received the original vaccine, but not all of them...this is basically where the book begins, with laws being voted on that required fertile women to do their patriotic duty and produce babies. The book also begins with one particular woman, Nasim, delivering a 3rd baby.
Each brief chapter (~3-4 pages) oscillates between the before/beginning and roughly ten years later as Nasim lives her daily life with her "handlers" between and during pregnancies. This structure and story-telling style creates a rhythmic and page-turning cadence. The more you get to know the later version of protagonist, the more eager you become to learn what transpired in those intervening years.