Birthmarked

Caragh O'Brien’s dystopian thriller Birthmarked takes place in a post-climate change world, in which resources are limited and life is separated into two distinct sections – the Enclave, where the rich founders of a sustainable fuel source live comfortable lives closed off from the world, and Wharfton, a settlement outside the Enclave where poor residents trade their newborn babies for food, water, and medical supplies. Sixteen-year-old Gaia is a midwife who delivers poor babies to the Enclave. As the novel progresses, Gaia, discovering the dark secrets of the Enclave, is forced to choose between loyalty to her family and her moral code, and loyalty to the Enclave. Birthmarked, the first novel in a trilogy of dystopian fiction is followed by Prized (2011) and Promised (2012).

The book begins as Gaia, a young midwife who has been apprenticing under her mother, delivers her first baby. Gaia and her mother have been charged with the task of delivering babies in Wharfton, the poor settlement outside the Enclave. Because the people of the Enclave need to maintain their genetic diversity to continue to survive, the first three babies born each month in Wharfton are surrendered to the Enclave in exchange for food and water. As Gaia delivers her first baby, she is struck by the difficulty of her job – her patient, a new mother who has never given birth before, now must give up her child in order for her community to survive. However, Gaia has been trained by her mother to be loyal to the Enclave and its demands. She takes the baby and delivers it to the nearby walled city.

On her way back home, Gaia meets Old Meg, a friend of the family, on the road. Old Meg tells her that her parents have been arrested for being disloyal to the Enclave and that guards are likely waiting at Gaia's door. Old Meg, afraid that she, too, will be arrested, tells Gaia that she is going to the Dead Forest to hide from the authorities. She encourages Gaia to go too, but Gaia refuses. Old Meg gives Gaia a bag her mother asked Old Meg to pass along to her and then disappears.



At her door, guards, who refuse to answer her questions about her parents’ whereabouts, interrogate Gaia. After the brief questioning, Gaia opens the bag from her mother and finds a ribbon covered in coded messages. The code, she soon discovers, has information on the genetic origins of all the babies handed over to the Enclave. Gaia protects the coded ribbon and continues on with her work, trying her best to remain loyal to the Enclave despite the loss of her parents.

Soon, Gaia talks to a baker, who tells her that her parents are going to be executed for their crimes. Astonished, Gaia decides she must convince the Enclave not to kill them. The baker sneaks Gaia into the Enclave, but once inside the prison, Gaia discovers another dark secret – one of the women the Enclave plans to execute is pregnant; by killing her, they will also kill her baby. Gaia tries, but can't stop the execution. Desperate to save the woman's unborn baby, Gaia, tricking a guard into believing that she is a friend of the stranger, is left alone with the woman's body. Using her skills as a midwife, she cuts the unborn baby out of its mother's womb.

At first, the baby doesn't appear to be breathing. Gaia tries to do CPR but is interrupted by a guard who catches her in the act of saving the infant. Gaia runs away with the child, who has finally started to breathe, but is trapped in a walled garden. The guard takes the baby away from her, and Gaia is locked in a prison cell with other disloyal women.



Inside the prison, the other women tell Gaia that her father has already been executed because he tried to escape. Her mother, however, has not yet been killed. Gaia learns that the Enclave wants to uncover the genetic make-up of the babies they've received from Wharfton because some babies have a gene that could help cure hemophilia, a disease which plagues the people of the Enclave. Gaia realizes that the code was on the ribbon her mother gave her, which was taken by the Enclave when she was captured. Gaia is interrogated; during her questioning, she is torn between remaining loyal to her mother and being executed herself. She agrees to break the code for the Enclave but is rescued by a kind guard in the nick of time.

As the book draws to its close, one of the guards, Captain Grey, a sweet man who warned Gaia about the interrogation and gave her information about her parents, comes back to help Gaia find her mother. Gaia tracks her mother down, but she is too pregnant to run. Gaia delivers her baby sister; her mother bleeds to death during their escape. Captain Grey is captured during the birth, and Gaia makes a promise to him and her mother that she will continue to fight, disappearing into the Dead Forest with her newborn baby sister.