The Gate to Women's Country

1988 Tepper, Sheri [Shirley] S[tewart] (1929-2016). The Gate to Women’s Country. New York: Foundation Books/Doubleday/Bantam Doubleday Dell. 278 pp. Rpt. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. Merril, PSt

Post-catastrophe world divided into a women’s and men’s communities in which the women try to keep alive the best of the post-catastrophe world and the men are warriors. There is a mixed carnival once a year, and boys stay with their mothers until five, when they join their fathers, visiting their mothers twice a year. At fifteen the boys choose to be warriors or live with their mothers with some having been rejected by their fathers. The novel begins with two ceremonies, the first on a boy’s fifteen birthday and the second at a boy’s fifth birthday, both reflecting the pain experienced by the mothers. In fact, the women have been using birth control and selecting the men who father children to try to breed out male violence. There are a number of subplots that make it a quite complicated novel. Female author.