Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood is the second book in the MaddAddam trilogy. It was written by Margaret Atwood in 2009.

Plot Synopsis
The Year of the Flood details the events of Oryx and Crake from the perspective of the lower classes in the pleeblands, specifically the God's Gardeners. The God's Gardeners are a religious sect that combines some Biblical practices and beliefs with some scientific practices and beliefs. They are vegetarians devoted to honoring and preserving all plant and animal life, and they predict a human species-ending disaster, which they call "The Waterless Flood". This prediction becomes true in a sense, as Crake's viral pandemic destroys human civilization.

The plot follows two characters, Toby and Ren, whose stories intertwine with each other and, at points, with major characters from Oryx and Crake. Much of the story is told through flashbacks with the two main characters separately surviving the apocalypse described in the previous novel, each reminiscing about their time in the God's Gardeners religious movement and the events that led to their current situations.

Toby is a young woman who loses her parents and is forced to live off of the grid in a shady meat burger joint. She soon encounters the unwelcome attentions of Blanco, the psychopathic manager of the chain who has a reputation for sexually assaulting and murdering the women in his employ. The leader of God's Gardeners, Adam One, is looked up to as a charismatic holy man but perceived by outsiders as a cult leader. He saves Toby from Blanco and takes her to the sanctuary of his rooftop garden. Toby becomes an influential member of the gardeners and encounters Ren, a child member of the gardeners. While Toby isn't converted to their religion, she stays with them for safety and for a family.

Ren meets Amanda Payne, a pleebrat, and invites her to stay with the God's Gardeners, which the girl accepts. They quickly become best friends. Ren eventually grows up to become a prostitute and trapeze dancer in the sex-club Scales and Tails, and happens to be locked in a bio-containment unit in the club when the pandemic occurs. Similarly, Toby is barricaded within a luxury spa where she has begun to work following a raid on the gardeners by Blanco and his brutish pals.