Children of God

She glanced down at Tommaso, sleeping in his stroller. Needing the comfort of his warm, little body, she leaned over and lifted him carefully, one hand behind his peach-fuzz head, the other under his little bottom. After a time, she smiled at her father and asked, "Would you like to hold your grandson?"

Kids and babies, he thought. Don’t do this to me again.

But there was no way to resist. He looked at this undreamt-of daughter and at her tiny child—frowning and milky in dreamless sleep—and found room in the crowded necropolis of his heart.

"Yes," he said finally, amazed and resigned and somehow content. "Yes. I would like that very much."

Acknowledgments

ONCE AGAIN, I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE KNOWN A FEW OF MY SOURCES. John Candotti’s insight into Exodus 33:17–23 is from the Chatam Sofer (quoted in Sparks Beneath the Surface, by Lawrence Kushner). The geneticist Susumu Ohno has, in real life, converted the genetic code for slime mold and mice into musical notation; the results reportedly resemble something by Bach, although harmony has yet to be discovered in the sequences. The extraordinary autobiographies of Temple Grandin and Do

Maura Kirby was there at the conception of this book. Kate Sweeney and Je

No one could ask for an agent more resourceful and ca

Finally, immeasurable love and gratitude to Don and Daniel, my very best husband and my very best son, whose support and affection and patience and laughter nourish my soul. Thanks, guys.

M.D.R

Children of God

MARY DORIA RUSSELL

A Reader’s Guide

Q: How would you describe the themes of this book?

MDR: The Sparrow was about the role of religion in the lives of many people, from atheist to mystic, and about the role of religion in history, from the Age of Discovery to the Space Age. I suppose that Children of God is about the aftermath of irreversible tragedy, about the many ways that we struggle to make sense of tragedy. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves, and the ways we justify our decisions, to bring ourselves to some kind of peace. And I guess it’s about the way time reveals significance, strips away self-serving excuses, lays truth bare, and both blunts pain and sharpens insight.

Q: In describing your reasons for writing a sequel, you were quoted as saying, "I left my main character impaled on the horns of a dilemma, and I wasn’t able to let it go at that." What was the dilemma to which you were referring?

MDR: Well, Emilio articulates this at the end of The Sparrow and in the Prelude to this book: If he accepts that the spiritual beauty and the religious rapture he experienced were real and true, then all the rest of it—the violence, the deaths, the maiming, the assaults, the humiliations—all that was God’s will, too. Either God is vicious—deliberately causing evil or at least allowing it to happen—or Emilio is a deluded ape who’s taken a lot of old folktales far too seriously. That may not be good theology, but at the begi

Q: How is that dilemma resolved in Children of God?

MDR: About a mille

Q: Why did you choose Children of God as the title for this book?

MDR: On one level, the title refers to the powerful notion that if we are all children of God, then we can become one family over time. It’s very subversive, that idea—it undermines hierarchies, erodes aristocracies. It makes the discontent of the powerless and the rebellion of the disenfranchised sacred, because it implies that each soul is sovereign and of value. And it challenges its believers to build a world where the inequities of the past are less glaring and brutal. It doesn’t matter if God is real or not—once the idea exists, it can change history. On another level, this book is about the revolutionary effect of children. The story begins with babies and ends with babies. There are babies born throughout the story. Even Cece the guinea pig has babies! There are children who are rejected, who are difficult to love, who are sure of their significance or ashamed of their heritage; there are children we get to know and others whose potential is only guessed at. Over time, each of them has some role to play in this unfolding drama, and on that level, the title implies that they are children of destiny, children whom God needed to complete the creation of the world He has in mind.