Jobe, Keely: The Endling

A feminist utopia crumbles with one impossible birth. On an isolated mountaintop, a small feminist community is fracturing under the weight of ideological divides and dwindling numbers. Mila struggles to hold the women together, while deeper in the bush her aunt Frank - an ailing recluse - lives with only her dog, Chicken Midnight, for company. Nearby, an orchid endling approaches its own death, and the extinction of its entire species. As Frank grows increasingly unwell and secretive about her condition, the community women begin mysteriously falling pregnant. When Mila gives birth to the only boy, their hardline separatist ideals face an impossible test. Vividly expressed, wildly funny, and wholly original, The Endling examines the volatile intersection of community and politics, exploring what happens when the borders we construct between species, between sexes, between self and world prove more porous than we imagine.