Book summary

In this first book of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series, Lilith Iyapo awakens to find herself a captive on a spaceship. Her last memory is of a time two and a half centuries earlier when she was traveling in the Andes, mourning the death of her family. A nuclear war devastated the planet, and the alien Oankali came to rescue the survivors, restore the planet, and harvest its genetic material, particularly that of the humans. They intend to train Lilith and the others to live on the newly forested Earth, where humans and Oankali will establish communities...and interbreed. When Lilith learns of the plan, she must decide whether cooperating with the Oankali would be the ultimate betrayal of humanity--or the only way to save it.