#109. UNQUENCHABLE FIRE By Rachel Pollack

Published : 1988
Pages : 364
Overall Mark : 9/10

In an America where the miraculous is par for the course, where magic and myths are as real as shopping malls and television game shows, Jennifer Mazdan listens to the modern storytellers recite the tales of the Founders.

But when strange things start to happen and Jennie becomes pregnant – from a dream – she enters a struggle which threatens her own life and causes her to question everything she has ever learned.

RACHEL POLLACK (1945-)
Rachel Pollack was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945. She is well known as a science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot. She has been a great influence on the women’s spirituality movement and on women’s SF. Her novel Unquenchable Fire won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 1989. Rachel Pollack lives in New York.

VERDICT
This is a rare sci-fi novel that treats religion not as an oppressive force but as something that people accept in their everyday lives, even though the occurences are so unusual. Pollack manages to create a character who is very real, and even though her cirumstances are unusual you can really imagine what she would be like if you met her, and how she might react to other events, not just an apparent virgin birth.