"When Lilith Iyapo wakes from a deep sleep, she finds herself aboard a vast spaceship, haunted by confused memories of a nuclear war that ravaged the world. She discovers that she is being held by the Oankali, a seemingly benevolent alien race that intervened in the human race's extinction, rescuing the survivors from their ruined planet and placing them in a coma-like sleep for centuries. Now the restored Earth is ready for inhabitants, and the Oankali...

Human and Oankali have been mating since the aliens first came to Earth to rescue the few survivors of an annihilating nuclear war. The Oankali began a massive breeding project, guided by the ooloi, a sexless subspecies capable of manipulating DNA, in the hope of eventually creating a perfect starfaring race. Jodahs is supposed to be just another hybrid of human and Oankali, but as he begins his transformation to adulthood he finds himself becoming...