In the mid-1980s near Boston, Massachusetts, a cabal of rightwing fundamentalists murders the U.S. President and members of Congress, disenfranchises women by impounding their credit cards and denying them jobs and education, and sets up Gilead, a repressively conservative state bent on annihilating homosexuals, abortionists, and religious sects other than their own, and resettling Jews, old women, and nonwhite people in radioactive territory, known as the Colonies. Because nuclear and biological warfare has polluted vast areas, the population suffers a sharp decline in viable births and a rise in birth defects. Consequently, infertile and aged females, as well as homosexuals, are dispatched as clean-up crews in the Colonies. Fertile women involved in illicit liaisons or second marriages are apprehended, indoctrinated, and parceled out to Commanders of the secret police as Handmaids. These reduniformed breeders live in seclusion and virtual slavery and are deprived of their real names and labeled with a patronym of the men who control their lives-as in "Ofcharles" and "Ofwarren." The purpose of these polygynous relationships is the perpetuation of the white race, which carries on warfare in outlying areas in a struggle for supremacy.
Offred, the second wife of Luke and mother of a five-year-old daughter, attempts to escape to Canada. She is apprehended and separated from her family. Her mother, a vocal feminist, disappears. Virtually alone and friendless, Offred is selected as a potential breeder and indoctrinated at the Rachel and Leah Re-Education Center. The Handmaids-in-training share pared-down barracks — like quarters in a gymnasium surrounded by fences topped by barbed wire. Reunited with her feisty, rebellious college pal Moira, Offred maintains spunk and individuality while pretending to follow the direction of sadistic armed matrons, particularly Aunt Lydia and Aunt Elizabeth.
