Atwood, Margaret Eleanor

Set in the Republic of Gilead, the former United States, during the late twentieth century. The declining birth rates caused by the effects of nuclear fallout and the AIDS epidemic result in a new social structure where all young women who can bear healthy children, are allocated to powerful regime men. This is the story of one of these young women.

A collection of forty-seven stories by such Canadian authors as Alice Munro and John Metcalf, arranged chronologically and focusing on works written after World War II.

Two children, delighted to be living in a tree, are dismayed when someone runs off with their ladder.