In 2086, corporations are monitoring fertility. Abortion is illegal. And the last woman alive who can perform the procedure is in hiding.
Seven years ago, midwife Mae Bastet was arrested for infanticide in the fractious Arizona Territory for providing health care to women in need. She was torn from her sons and sent to Buzzard--an experimental private prison deep in the Sonoran Desert, run by the paramilitary corporation Obsityan.
Desperate to reunite her family, Mae tries to keep her head down, swallow her prison-issued hormone supplements, and do her job as a glorified school nurse to Obsityan's army of teenage drone pilots. But when mysterious, improbable pregnancies begin cropping up in her charges, she uncovers a web of secrets that has the power to destroy Obsityan. Mae must choose: stay complicit in Obsityan's crimes or hold fast to her midwife principles and risk never seeing her sons again.
Buzzard is a ferocious dystopian debut that traces the possible trajectory of our current political and technological reality--and the power of our deepest human bonds.
About the Author :
Inez Ray is a California-born, Puget Sound-based writer. She holds a bachelor of arts in creative writing from San Francisco State University and has been a doula and midwife assistant for over a decade. Buzzard is her first novel.
Review :
"Buzzard is a fantastic, futuristic feminist novel set within an all-too-familiar totalitarian regime. Inez Ray's clear-eyed analysis magnifies our nation's surveillance system, gender oppression, and abortion criminalization. Buzzard's take-no-shit midwife will leave you ready to conquer today's hellscape."
-- "Renee Bracey Sherman, coauthor of Liberating Abortion: Claiming Our History, Sharing Our Stories, and Building the Reproductive Future We Deserve"
"Buzzard is a fierce and unsettling vision of a future shaped by corporate empires, surveillance, the erosion of reproductive rights, and militarized expansion. A searing and propulsive novel, Buzzard interrogates power at every level from militarized corporations and private prisons to the intimate betrayals between those forced to survive inside them, while asking who survives in broken systems and what resistance means. Part dystopian epic, part intimate family saga, Ray builds a world that feels frighteningly plausible in its brutality. Yet beneath the violence lies a profound meditation on family, resistance, and hope. This is dystopian fiction with a beating human heart."
-- "Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, author of Drinking from Graveyard Wells "
"Buzzard is a harrowingly plausible glimpse into the future, scintillating with humanity, grit, and intelligence. Through interview transcripts, blog posts, letters, and witty, electric prose, Inez Ray conjures a dystopian vision of the late twenty first century in which climate disaster, civil strife and authoritarian pronatalism have splintered the United States into an unrecognizable, yet realistic tableau of polities vying for scarce resources...There is a searing immediacy to Ray's descriptions of the American West--the luster and desolation of its beautiful landscapes--that is reminiscent of the oeuvre of the legendary Octavia Butler. Readers of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale will find much thematic resonance in this gripping feminist novel that is voiced with both a timeless flair and a distinct, contemporary verve that feels like an answer to the storm clouds of fascism gathering on today's horizon."
-- "E.G. Condé, author of Sordidez "
"As taut and charged as a live wire, Buzzard is an urgent reckoning of a novel. In this bold debut, Inez Ray chisels out a dystopian, drone-plagued near-future that's dangerously fractious and yet eerily familiar. In a world where fertility is systemically monitored and even the sun-bleached Sonoran Desert is dominated by a militarized private prison, Buzzard finds its champion in Mae--a mother, midwife, and reluctant hero. A page-turner with a blazing heart, Buzzard is a novel of substance and formal flare, tackling head-on the ever-pressing questions of bodily autonomy, technology, and the perils of freedom."
-- "Ariel Delgado Dixon, author of Sourland "
"In a genre wherein distance often protects readers from the full force of its commentary, Buzzard paints with just enough familiarity to offer a harrowing look into the future of bodily autonomy under the rising tide of Christofascism. With prose as blistering as the desert setting she so immersively cultivates, Ray delivers a challenging yet vital narrative for our present moment."
-- "Victoria Carbol, author of A Great and Powerful Tyranny "
"Inez Ray's lived experience as a doula is present on every page. Incredibly timely, disturbing, and necessary--Buzzard is a must-read addition to the dystopian genre."
-- "Tatiana Schlote-Bonne, author of The Mean Ones and What Feeds Below"
"Ringing with echoes of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Inez Ray's Buzzard is a contemporary masterpiece of speculative fiction. With exquisite world-building, powerfully rendered heroines steeped in spiritual midwifery, and lyrically beautiful writing, this is a marvelous debut. It's also a warning call to us all. In these dark days of corporate malevolence and misogynistic fascism, Ray's future feels all too real. Read this book before it's too late, and let's begin building a better future together."
-- "Alexander Weinstein, author of Universal Love and Children of the New World"
"Set in a near future shaped by corporate greed, militarization, extraction, and relentless surveillance, Buzzard explores the ways societies dehumanize and discard those deemed expendable. With sharp insight and emotional depth, this haunting novel asks what it means to resist when hope itself is risky. A gripping story of endurance and the search for dignity, Buzzard lingers long after the final page."
-- "Laura Danger, activist and author of No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More "
"This book is the moment--incredible storytelling, a visual and visceral experience, heart-wrenching, gutting. A 2026 must-read."
-- "Naomi Darling, founder of Boozhoo Books "
"This is sacred storytelling. Inez Ray brings us in with a story surrounding someone many in the US would paint as the ultimate villain but completely disrupts that. We're guided through a world that's unsettling because of the familiarity to our present. Ray hands over the real power to the reader: What will you do with this prophetic forewarning?"
-- "Dominique Burleson, owner of Paperbacks & Frybread Co."
"Visceral and deeply intimate, Buzzard starkly examines the sociopolitical cost of the decisions we make in the present, and delivers a timely omen of the future that awaits us all. An absolute must-read."
-- "Elaine Ho, author of Cry, Voidbringer "
