The Book of Zara

"You well may be the Eve of a new hominid species," Chief Librarian Key told Zara. She was on the cusp of receiving a PhD from Stanford when her mentor brought news that because of mutations in her DNA, it was critically important she bear children. Not in a relationship at the time, Zara demurred, until Key explained that the emerging species she represented was likely to replace the degenerating Homo sapiens. Zara considered herself a woman apart, a bisexual naturist with a genius IQ and the ability to converse with a wide range of mammals. She also knew how to float out of her body to explore invisibly anywhere she wanted to go, but of course, her whole family could do that. Yet this revelation from the Chief Librarian not only reinforced an already deep sense of isolation but brought unwelcome complications, the first of which was finding a suitable partner. This sixth book in the Heretics in Occupied Eden series focuses on the next generation and may be read as a stand-alone work or as part of the whole. Zara is the oldest child of Cloud and Terp Morgan, the protagonists of the first three Heretics books, and her significantly long life unfolds in ways even more extraordinary than the boundary shattering lives of her parents. In the course of the narrative, Zara and others refer to The Third Song of Creation, an alternative creation myth intentionally informed by modern psychology that she wrote as a college project. In the form of a thousand-line poem, the myth in its entirety is included as an appendix.