Rainy and Lark’s Life in a Crumbling America

In a near-future America where infrastructure is failing, resources are scarce, and wealthy “astronaut” families increasingly operate above the law, Rainier “Rainy” lives a relatively peaceful life in Icebridge, Minnesota, near Lake Superior. A huge but gentle former house painter and woodworker, Rainy plays electric bass in a local band called Red Dog. His wife, Lark, is an obsessive reader who runs “Bread,” a combination bakery and used bookstore, with her friend Maudie Antoinette.

Their world is already showing signs of collapse. Rainy’s friend Jack Labrino, who owns The Lantern tavern, has become consumed by despair about society and the approaching Tashi Comet, which he sees as another omen that everything is falling apart.

Then a strange young man named Kellan arrives looking for somewhere to stay. Gaunt and scarred, with one burned hand curled into an unusable claw, Kellan is clearly hiding something. But he immediately wins Lark’s attention by bringing her an extraordinary gift: an advance galley of I Cheerfully Refuse, the unpublished final novel of the long-dead cult writer Molly Thorn. Lark has collected Thorn’s work for years and considers the lost book a literary treasure.

Rainy takes Kellan to the Greenstone Fair to find parts for Kellan’s antique Ford Ranchero. There they encounter the intimidating police officer Apeknuckle, who tries to bully an auto-parts vendor named Grabo until she fights back with a modified crankshaft. Kellan secretly steals the car parts he needs and later gives Rainy a small compass.

As Rainy and Lark get to know him, Kellan reveals pieces of his past. He is a fugitive “squelette,” one of the disposable laborers working aboard a medicine ship, and he is terrified of a man named Werryck. Kellan also repeatedly inhales nitrous oxide to calm himself, making it difficult for Rainy to know exactly how much danger he has brought to their door.

Lark Is Murdered

The danger arrives soon after Lark acquires an enormous collection of old books from a Duluth estate.

First, Labrino gives in to the despair that has been consuming him. He takes Willow, a widely available pharmaceutical used by people seeking death, and lies down to die. Rainy stays with his friend and plays bass for him as Labrino peacefully slips away.

Then Kellan abruptly disappears.

During a violent microburst, Rainy goes searching for Maudie’s missing dog, Vixen. When he returns home, he finds the house ransacked. Upstairs, Lark has been murdered in the attic with a lump hammer.

The police initially look suspiciously at Rainy, but he understands that Lark’s death is connected to Kellan. Whoever came into the house was searching for either the fugitive himself or something he had stolen. Rainy soon realizes that Werryck and his men are responsible.

With Lark gone and Werryck closing in, there is little left for Rainy in Icebridge. He turns his attention to Flower, an unfinished sailboat inherited from his late neighbor Erik Haflinger. After Werryck and his thugs confront him during a Red Dog performance at The Lantern and later track him to his home, Rainy launches Flower into Lake Superior during a brutal ice-and-snow gale.

Rainy Escapes Across Lake Superior

Rainy survives the storm and reaches Lightner, where he encounters Apeknuckle again. Surprisingly, the officer warns him that powerful outsiders connected to the wealthy astronaut class are hunting him. Apeknuckle also reveals that Tonio, one of the troubled children Rainy once taught music, is under his protection. Rainy leaves a harmonica for the boy before continuing his voyage.

He intends to reach Canada’s remote Slate Islands, a place he once visited with Lark. During that earlier trip, they met an elderly woman whom Lark suspected might actually have been Molly Thorn.

Before Rainy can reach the islands, Werryck contacts him on a prepaid phone and finally explains what Kellan stole. The young fugitive escaped with roughly 10,000 doses of Willow from a pharmaceutical production line and began using them as currency. Some of the drugs reached Labrino and young people around Icebridge. Werryck offers to clear Rainy if he helps find Kellan.

Rainy refuses and throws the phone into Lake Superior.

His journey soon nearly kills him. After passing the submerged ghost town of Gold, Ontario, Flower breaks a chainplate during a squall. At the same time, a wound on Rainy’s chin becomes badly infected. He manages to reach the town of Jolie, where welder Stevie agrees to make replacement chainplates if Rainy will play bass with her daughter Mina and the local band, the Indolent Vagrants, at a benefit concert for Nils, a father dying of cancer.

Rainy is cared for by the eccentric, nearly blind Dr. Girard and his wife, Evelyn, who lost their daughter Tinker to a fever. Girard treats Rainy’s infection, while Evelyn gives him clothes and hospitality. Rainy performs at the benefit, helping the community support Nils and his family.

Once Flower is repaired, Rainy resumes his journey toward the Slate Islands.

But Werryck has beaten him there.

Rainy spots Werryck’s dark motor cruiser anchored in the bay and is forced back into another violent storm. He is thrown overboard and survives only by grabbing a trailing sea-anchor rope and hauling himself back aboard. While investigating a mysterious clanking sound in Flower’s bilge afterward, he finally discovers why Werryck has pursued him so relentlessly: Kellan secretly hid a steel canister containing thousands of iridescent Willow doses aboard the boat.

Sol Joins the Voyage

Running low on food, Rainy stops in Winton, Michigan, where he meets Sol, a fierce nine-year-old girl living in an abusive household controlled by a paranoid man called King Richard. Richard presides over several young girls while sitting beside a machine-gun cross.

Sol secretly stows away aboard Flower. Rainy initially tries to return her because he does not want to be accused of kidnapping a child, but when Richard strikes Sol with a rock, Rainy can no longer leave her there. He gives Richard one of his most treasured possessions—his Fender Jazz bass guitar—in exchange for Sol’s freedom.

Sol and Rainy become companions aboard Flower. She tells him that she has a grandfather called Papa Griff, whom they might find in Redfield, and admits that she stole $422 from Richard before escaping.

Their next obstacle is the Huffin Lift Bridge, connecting Blinker and Brighton. Its corrupt operators, Alistair and Ricky, demand $370 for passage and then refuse to honor the permit the following morning.

With help from Essie, a bait vendor on the island side of the bridge, Rainy comes up with another plan. He floods Flower’s bilge enough to lower the boat in the water and then pulls the unmasted vessel beneath the bridge at night.

During their escape, Rainy and Sol witness something far worse than simple corruption: a mainland mob led by Alistair hangs three “pagan” islanders from the bridge structure. Before they get away, Sol manages a small act of revenge by stealing Alistair’s thick eyeglasses, effectively blinding him.

Werryck Captures Rainy and Sol

Rainy and Sol eventually find Papa Griff in Port Mineral. Unfortunately, Sol’s grandfather is a vain, smooth-talking former actor who proves almost immediately that he is not a dependable guardian. He cannot even handle Flower properly and accidentally opens a sea valve, flooding the cabin.

Before Rainy can figure out what to do next, Werryck catches up with them near Michipicoten Island. His cruiser is accompanied by Posterity, an enormous rusting pharmaceutical and hospital ship. Werryck’s thug Tom Skint cuts Flower’s anchor line, and Rainy and Sol are taken prisoner.

Rainy is thrown into a filthy cell in the lower decks, known as the Shambles. Werryck informs him that he has already been “convicted” through an expedited system that makes any meaningful legal process irrelevant.

Yet Werryck also does something bizarre: he gives Rainy back the Fender bass that Rainy surrendered to King Richard. Werryck suffers from decades-long insomnia and discovers that Rainy’s deep blues playing can calm him, so his prisoner becomes his unwilling personal musician.

The rest of Rainy’s existence aboard Posterity is far less comfortable. He is assigned to a paint crew with prisoners Beezie, Verlyn, Didier, and Harriet, guarded by the muscular Burke. He also meets Marcel, a charismatic young janitor who is quietly organizing resistance aboard the ship.

Then Kellan reappears.

He and eleven other escaped laborers—the group known as “the twelve”—have been recaptured. As punishment, Werryck locks all twelve inside an iron cage on an exposed raft during a freezing snowstorm. Against the odds, every one of them survives the night.

The Mutiny on Posterity

Marcel has been preparing to overthrow the people controlling the ship. With help from kitchen worker Tove and laboratory technician Pharma Luca, he launches a mutiny. Guards are drugged, prisoners rebel, and control of Posterity begins slipping from Werryck’s hands.

During the violence, Tom Skint shoots Marcel and a guard. Rainy attacks Skint, grabs him, and throws him over a catwalk railing to his death on the deck below.

The surviving prisoners and rebellious crew members seize Werryck’s dark cruiser and prepare to escape to Canada. Kellan chooses to remain with the other members of the twelve rather than leave them behind. Rainy also frees Burke, who has decided he wants a different life.

Rainy’s priority, however, is Sol. He finds her hidden in the wheelhouse stack and gets her safely back aboard Flower, which has been towed behind Posterity. He and Sol escape in the sailboat while the larger group departs aboard the cruiser.

Werryck and Papa Griff are left locked below in the Shambles.

Rainy Chooses to Keep Living

Rainy, Sol, and Burke make it safely back to Jolie. Burke eventually leaves in a van and heads west, while Rainy settles into the loft above Dr. Girard and Evelyn’s garage. Sol lives with Girard and Evelyn in the main house, where she learns math and begins scattering fruit and flower seeds into cracks in sidewalks and abandoned patches of ground throughout town.

Eventually The Mosquito newspaper brings news about the people they left behind. The escapees aboard the cruiser successfully reached Walda, but Posterity sank to the bottom of Lake Superior. Werryck and Griff were still trapped inside.

The long-awaited Tashi Comet finally reaches its brilliant perihelion, blazing across the night sky. Rather than treating it as the omen of doom that Labrino once feared, Rainy continues forward.

He takes Flower on one final peaceful voyage to the Slate Islands, the place so deeply connected to his memories of Lark. Although she is gone, Rainy still feels the warmth of the life they shared.

Then he sails back to Jolie.

Life there is continuing without him having to forget what came before. Sol is building a home. Music continues too: a gifted sixteen-year-old bass player named Rachel has joined the Indolent Vagrants. Rainy listens to the band, steps off Flower onto solid ground, and prepares to rejoin the world rather than keep sailing away from it.