Post Rock Limestone Caryatids

It's a future in which people live sequestered, from infancy, in tiny cubicles, their only connection to the outside world via the screens that fill their walls. Driven by desperation and grief, Maeve Wolf leaves her cubicle to explore the vast open prairie of wild Kansas, and the strange and disparate characters who inhabit it. Part dystopian sci-fi, part women's lit, with a touch of romance and a generous helping of nature writing.

Through protagonist Maeve Wolf, Post Rock Limestone Caryatids explores life in a future in which genetically modified people live their lives in cubicles, accessing the world entirely through media. Wracked by fear and self-doubt, Maeve longs desperately for connection with other people, especially her infant niece.

Then Jabar appears, to proselytize Maeve. Or does he have some other motive? Next thing she knows, she’s leaving her cube forever, thrown into the high-tech squalor of a squatters’ camp in Manhattan, Kansas; discovering scrappy small-time thief Cal; meeting the vast, open prairie of the Flint Hills.

She also meets the Sisters of the Star, itinerant ladies in service to the needy; and Valie, a woman seeking to give her unborn child what she herself can never have: freedom from the bonds of genetic manipulation.

Themes of technology, popular culture, religion, and child development intertwine; part dystopian sci fi, part womens’ lit, part nature writing, Post Rock Limestone Caryatids is a story that could not be confined to one genre. The only way to know what this book is about is to read it.

“And the writing, at the paragraph and sentence level, frequently bares its beauty in a range from scatological to sublime, though in the least pretentious of ways.  One could read many passages as the journal of a writer who has herself plumbed both the mysteries and fears of homo sapiens childbirth, and the macro-birthing process of Mother Earth. Ireland could become one of the few legitimate woman naturalists–though this is only one of the book’s several modes–a tradition dominated by males in America since the 1870s.” —Shawn St. Jean, author, Clotho’s Loom

Rachel Creager Ireland grew up in Emporia, Kansas, "front porch to the Flint Hills." She studied Sociology-Anthropology and Women's Studies at Knox College, then spent several years aimlessly wandering the hippie ghettos of the US, collecting money for environmental groups, serving up health food and coffee, camping among redwoods, busking. Eventually she settled in Chicago, then completed a professional program at Chicago School of Massage Therapy. In 2004 Rachel and her husband Kevin packed a truck with all their belongings, two cats, and a bun in the oven, and moved to Strong City, Kansas, where they took ownership of what became the Prairie Fire Inn and Spa. They're still there, at this writing.

Rachel blogs at veronicasgarden.wordpress.com.

She also writes monster erotica under the name Crea DelRand, at creadelrand.wordpress.com.