Bethia secretly meets young Wampanoag man Cheeshahteaumuck on the island and the two begin exchanging knowledge about language, plants, and terrain.

Bethia names Cheeshahteaumuck 'Caleb' after a brave companion of Moses, hoping the name will guide her friend toward salvation.

Caleb tells Bethia he can no longer meet with her because he is beginning training to become a pawaaw under his uncle Tequamuck.

Caleb's brother Nanaakomin dies of smallpox, and many Wampanoag turn away from Tequamuck after the disease proves beyond the pawaaw's power.

Caleb arrives at the Mayfield household dressed in settler clothing to study alongside Makepeace and Joel under Bethia's father.

Baby Solace crawls into a pit dug for a new well and drowns, devastating the entire Mayfield household.

After outlasting the pawaaws in a public confrontation, Bethia's father announces he will sail to England to raise missionary funds.

A storm strikes the settlement and sinks Bethia's father's ship, killing him and destroying the family's remaining financial security.

Bethia's grandfather proposes to indenture Bethia to Master Corlett in Cambridge to fund Makepeace's education after their father's death.

Bethia signs a four-year indenture contract and travels to Cambridge, where she will serve as a maidservant at Corlett's school.

Anne, a Native American woman raised by a fur trader after her parents died of smallpox, arrives at Master Corlett's school.

Anne is discovered to have suffered a miscarriage, and Caleb and Joel are immediately suspected of being responsible.

Noah Merry's family purchases Bethia's indentures from Master Corlett, unexpectedly setting Bethia free from her servitude.

Caleb and Joel sit for their Harvard entrance examinations and both perform impressively, with Joel excelling even beyond Caleb.

Bethia whispers Tequamuck's sacred words to Caleb and gives him a wampum belt; Caleb sings his death song and dies.

Bethia Mayfield secretly befriends the young Wampanoag man she names Caleb, exchanging knowledge across a vast cultural divide on their shared island. After a smallpox outbreak weakens the tribe's resistance to Christianity, Caleb comes to study at Bethia's home alongside her brother Makepeace and Iacoomis's son Joel. Tragedy strikes the Mayfield family when baby Solace drowns and then Bethia's father perishes in a shipwreck, stripping the siblings of their financial security. Bethia is indentured to Master Corlett in Cambridge, where a crisis surrounding a Native student named Anne leads unexpectedly to Bethia's freedom. Caleb and Joel pass their Harvard entrance exams and begin their studies despite racism and deprivation, while Bethia watches from the margins of the college. After Joel is killed at sea and Caleb dies of tuberculosis, Bethia is left to carry forward the story of a friendship that defined her life.

The headline events of Caleb's journey from the island to Harvard and beyond.

Bethia's twin brother Zuriel dies after falling from a hay cart while Bethia is absorbed in a stolen book.

Island settlers harvest whale meat from a beach belonging to the Wampanoag by agreement, exploiting the tribe's temporary absence.

Bethia stumbles onto a Wampanoag drum ceremony in the dark, is captivated by the music, and secretly dances among them.

Bethia's father travels to the Wampanoag village, confronts the hostile pawaaw Tequamuck, and tends to the ailing sonquem Nahnoso.

Bethia's father returns from the Wampanoag village excited by the possibility of converting Nahnoso, a powerful clan leader.

Caleb, Makepeace, and Joel study side by side under Bethia's father in the Mayfield home, with the two indigenous students far outpacing Makepeace.

Bethia's father outlasts the pawaaws in a public contest of wills, enduring their chants and curses until he wins many new converts.

Bethia's father delivers a farewell sermon before his voyage; Tequamuck arrives and drives away the Wampanoag who came to pay tribute.

At Corlett's school, Bethia confronts wealthy student Joseph Dudley and earns his respect by demonstrating her knowledge of Anne Bradstreet's poetry.

Makepeace informs Bethia that he has already accepted Noah Merry's marriage petition on her behalf without asking her consent.

Master Corlett allows Makepeace to beat Bethia as punishment for cursing aloud; Anne later tends Bethia's wounds with an herbal compress.

Bethia visits Samuel Corlett at Harvard's Indian College and considers his father's suggestion that the two of them marry.

Bethia secures a position working at Harvard's buttery, allowing her to remain near scholarly life after leaving Corlett's service.

Bethia attends Caleb and Joel's solstice learning exhibitions and is alarmed to see Caleb gaunt and plagued by a persistent cough.

Joel's boat founders on an island, and he and the other passengers are killed by indigenous people who mistake them for settlers.

Before Caleb enters Bethia's life, she suffers the death of her twin brother Zuriel and witnesses settlers openly betray their agreements with the Wampanoag over a beached whale. Her father pulls her into his world of Indigenous conversion, bringing her face to face with Tequamuck's defiance and the complex politics of a Wampanoag village in crisis. After her father's death and the loss of family resources, Makepeace drags Bethia to Cambridge where she must fight for dignity among entitled students and endure physical punishment at her own brother's hands. Caleb and Joel navigate Harvard's hazing rituals and food scarcity while Bethia works in the college buttery, listening through the hatch to lectures she is forbidden to attend. The solstice exhibitions reveal Caleb's alarming decline, and Joel's violent death at sea robs the story of its anticipated triumph. These events fill in the human cost behind the novel's larger arc of cultural collision and individual sacrifice.

The supporting events that shape Caleb's story and define Bethia's world.

Bethia quietly learns the Wampanoag language by listening while Iacoomis teaches her father, gaining knowledge she is formally denied.

After Zuriel's death, Bethia's father ends her lessons and instructs her to accept a future as a farmer's wife.

Bethia secretly drinks from Tequamuck's gourd of hallucinogenic hellebore in the Wampanoag village, experiencing sickness and disturbing visions.

Caleb defuses Makepeace's attempt to humiliate him by cheerfully helping plant the Mayfield crops using effective indigenous farming techniques.

Bethia's father's will bequeaths all property to Makepeace, leaving Bethia only a Hebrew Bible, a copy of Homer, and her mother's portrait.

Bethia deliberately delays accepting the indenture arrangement, quietly enjoying the power her hesitation holds over her anxious brother Makepeace.

Bethia argues for women's education by reciting Anne Bradstreet's poetry to Joseph Dudley, pointing out that even a queen is a woman.

Master Corlett, wanting to retain Bethia's help at the school, suggests she consider marrying his scholarly son Samuel.

Bethia and Caleb secretly devise a plan to escort Anne away from Cambridge and back to her people on the island.

Noah Merry tells Bethia he has fallen in love with another woman, dissolving the unwanted betrothal Makepeace had arranged.

After arguing with Bethia over her defense of Anne and indigenous people, Samuel catches up to her, declares his love, and kisses her.

Bethia and Samuel reconcile in the Harvard library, have sex, and she finally agrees to accept his marriage proposal.

Caleb refuses to serve an upperclassman as Harvard's hazing tradition demands, drawing anger from the broader college community.

Tequamuck allows Bethia to witness a secret healing ritual and prophesies that the Christian God will ultimately destroy his people.

Harvard's Indian College is torn down after years of conflict as elderly Bethia, on her deathbed, reflects on Caleb's lasting impact on her life.

Bethia's education begins not in a classroom but through careful, hidden listening, a skill that quietly gives her access to languages and knowledge her society formally denies her. Encounters with Wampanoag spiritual life push her beyond Puritan boundaries, while Caleb's integration into the settler world produces moments of unexpected negotiation and dignity. A succession of pivotal choices shapes both their futures: Bethia's deliberate delay before accepting indenture, her defense of women's learning, and the dangerous plan she and Caleb devise to protect Anne from punishment. Her relationship with Samuel Corlett develops through argument and attraction into a marriage that offers the intellectual partnership she always craved, while Caleb's refusal to submit to Harvard's hazing marks his insistence on dignity at every turn. A final journey to find Tequamuck yields his devastating prophecy about the fate of his people, and the novel closes with an elderly Bethia on her deathbed, the last witness to all that was gained and lost.

The key decisions and discoveries that shift the course of every character's life.