Sufferance

Jeremiah Camp is an Indigenous man who has stopped speaking. He lives alone in a former Catholic residential school on the Cradle River reserve near the small town of Gleaming. The school, built in 1903 and operated for 62 years under Father Edward Hinch, once housed over a hundred children. Many died there, and 77 lie buried in the adjacent graveyard. Jeremiah spends his days in deliberate solitude: walking the river path into town, buying a brownie from Swannie Gagnon, the town's baker, sharing coffee at the Piggy café, and returning to the school to chisel children's names into limestone slabs he hauls from the dry riverbed, replacing the wooden crosses that mark each grave.

Florence Holder runs the Piggy as a morning coffee spot after the death of her partner, Reggie Clarke, who opened the café in a converted bank building. Each morning she delivers a news roundup and reads Jeremiah a tarot card, blunt and relentless in her refusal to let him disappear from human contact.

The reserve, home to roughly 40 families, is in crisis. Indian Affairs replaced the band's traditional plank houses with government-issued trailers that quickly deteriorated. Mould climbs the walls, linoleum buckles, and roofs leak. Nutty Moosonee, an elderly woman on the reserve, sits outside her condemned trailer in a recliner, her breathing labored from years of mould exposure. Mayor Bob Loomis pressures Jeremiah to sell the school property, dismissing the band's decades-old land claim, while pursuing a plan to develop the land into a luxury subdivision called Cradle River Estates. Maribelle Wegman, a local widow who chairs the city's heritage preservation committee, opposes Jeremiah's removal of the graveyard crosses and organizes to have them declared a heritage site.

Jeremiah's quiet life breaks open when Oliver Flood, the majordomo of the Locken Group, an international conglomerate, arrives at the school. Flood informs Jeremiah that Thomas Locken, the seventh-generation heir to the Locken fortune, has died, and that Locken's daughter, Ash, requires Jeremiah's skills. Years earlier, Jeremiah worked for the Locken Group as a "Forecaster," someone gifted at finding patterns in vast quantities of information and predicting outcomes. Flood's summons is not a request.

At the Plaza Hotel, Ash Locken presents Jeremiah with a manila envelope containing a single sheet: a list of 12 names, including her father and 11 other ultra-wealthy individuals, with a handwritten note at the bottom reading, "We Exist at the Sufferance of Others." Locken believes Jeremiah created this list and wants to know why people on it are dying. Fabrice Gloor, head of the Suisse-Baer Group, died in a car accident near Nice. Amanda Cho, a pharmaceutical magnate, was found dead in a Toronto hotel. The deaths appear natural or accidental, but they are accumulating.

Jeremiah is helicoptered to the Locken Group's Lighthouse tower, where a research team presents dossiers on each of the 12 individuals. All are billionaires whose fortunes were inherited rather than self-made, and all have connections to Ankh Technologies, a ghost company with no apparent operations. The team's lead researcher, Dr. Alisha Brown, concludes that the probability of so many deaths occurring by chance is negligible. Someone is targeting billionaires.

Locken privately reveals that her father was obsessed with defeating death. He formed Ankh as a secret consortium of ultra-rich individuals united in the pursuit of immortality, funding research into organisms with indefinite lifespans. A facility on Auckland Island, an uninhabited sub-Antarctic landmass leased by Ankh, was recently destroyed in an explosion. Locken tells Jeremiah her father bought the school property and gave it to him, likely as payment for a past forecast, and asks him to produce a new one.

Meanwhile, Indian Affairs sends officials to the reserve with Lock-Mould spray foam as the solution to the mould crisis. Roman Moosonee, Nutty's grandson and a talented cornet player, confronts the officials and demands compensation for the defective trailers. Ada Stillday, a cousin of Jeremiah's mother, Ruby Camp, shouts that they need clean water and electricity, not cans of whipped cream.

Emma Stillday, Ada's daughter and a lawyer unable to afford the dues needed to practice, returns from Winnipeg with her young daughter, Lala. She reopens the Piggy as a full restaurant using Reggie's old recipes. Lala, an irrepressible child, attaches herself to Jeremiah, calling him "Pop-Up" and insisting he walk her to school. When Wegman arrives at the school with police officers demanding Jeremiah's arrest for burning the crosses, Emma intervenes, asserting that the police have no jurisdiction on private property outside city limits or on Cradle River treaty land.

The school fills rapidly. Emma and Lala move in, followed by Nutty and Ada when Nutty's respiratory infection makes returning to her trailer impossible. The Neighbours, homeless families sheltering in the derelict Bambridge and Moore box plant, need a legal address to access social services. Emma asks if the dormitory can serve as one. Roman's drum group, the Clay Pigeons, begins practicing down the hall.

The deaths on the list continue. The reserve's council office burns down when Wapi, Louis Bear's nephew, accidentally ignites gasoline while refueling a hot generator. Wapi, who survived a car accident that killed his parents and lives with a brain injury, is badly burned. Louis, the chief of Cradle River, tells reporters the city cut off their water, making it impossible to fight the fire.

Locken confirms what Jeremiah has deduced: she used his list as a blueprint. Her father assembled 12 billionaires to pursue immortality with no regard for humanity or the planet. Jeremiah saw what Thomas Locken could not: The real danger was the concentration of unchecked power in people who imagined themselves separate from society. Locken decided to prune the orchard, and Flood carried out the killings. The press will attribute the deaths to a fictional terrorist group, and the story will fade within months. The remaining names on the list die in short succession.

Locken asks Jeremiah to prepare a new forecast identifying which billionaires should be kept and which pruned. The Ankh Foundation offers to rebuild the reserve with permanent housing, a well, solar power, and internet service. The band council, advised by Emma, declines. Louis explains they will build the new council office themselves with help from a Mohawk construction firm, preferring self-determination to generosity with strings attached.

At the Gleaming Spring Festival, Roman and the Clay Pigeons burn the last of the crosses in the firepit. Jeremiah sits in the drum circle, keeping the beat with a handmade drumstick Louis has given him. Wegman has fled to Florida, and the mayor's office is under investigation for improper contract letting. Ada discovers that one of the photographs in Ruby Camp's lunch box, Jeremiah's keepsake of his mother, is not of Ruby but of Ada as a young woman.

Flood makes a final visit, walking with Jeremiah to Broken Bough Falls. He asks whether Jeremiah thinks humanity is redeemable. Jeremiah has already concluded that the commitment needed for revolt against concentrated wealth does not exist. Flood tells him he might enjoy pruning and departs.

The novel ends without resolution. In the graveyard, Jeremiah finishes chiseling the name Mary Camp, a great-aunt who died at 12, into stone. At dusk, the school behind him glows with light: voices, guitar chords, Lala counting through her times tables. The crows settle into the trees. Lala calls out that Pancakes the cat wants him to stay and that he gets third pick of a new litter of puppies. Jeremiah does not answer. He dumps stones from his wagon onto the ground and sits in the cooling air among the graves and the remaining crosses, neither committing to stay nor preparing to leave.