Summary
The book begins in Kearney, Nebraska. The narrator lyrically describes the flight of a flock of Sandhill cranes. The story then immediately shifts to a woman named Karin Schluter who is driving back to Kearney to check up on her brother, Mark. She drives quickly through the night, hurried along by the thought that he needs her. She arrives at the hospital and finds that Mark is in a coma. She tries to speak to him but gets no response. She learns he has been involved in a terrible car accident The nurse asks her to leave the room. She sits in the waiting room, feeling despair and repeatedly asking to be let back in.
She checks into a hotel near the hospital and bides her time. She calls the office of her employer, a computer vendor in Sioux City, Iowa, and asks for more time off. They say they cannot give it to her, and she accepts that she will likely lose her job for being in Kearney for an extended period of time. She returns to the hospital and asks around the trauma unit about a strange note that was discovered along with Mark. Mark begins to show signs of consciousness, though he does not move or speak.
Eventually, he wakes up from his coma but cannot properly communicate. Karin briefly returns to Sioux City, where she loses her job. She comes back to Kearney and continues to observe Mark's recovery. Mark's friends Tommy and Duane come to visit. Karin isn't fond of either of them and thinks they had a bad influence on Mark. She is questioned by the police about the accident and she learns someone called in the crash and that there was possibly another vehicle on the road. Mark's progress continues slowly and he is cared for by a number of therapists and doctors.
Mark's girlfriend Bonnie visits. Mark is able to speak but cannot form complete, coherent sentences. Mark periodically falls into fits of rage. Karin grows increasingly lonely in Kearney and considers calling her ex-boyfriend, Robert Karsh. She dials the number several times without calling. Finally, one night, she calls him but hears a young girl on the line. It is Karsh's daughter, Ashley. She hangs up the phone and calls Daniel Riegel, her other ex-boyfriend and Mark's childhood best friend.
They talk and catch up. She tells him about Mark's accident. He tells her about his work with the Sandhill crane refuge. She continues to visit Mark and the hospital while also reconnecting with Daniel. Eventually, Mark is able to speak lucidly. One day, while Karin is visiting, he asks what she is doing at the hospital. She says she is his sister and he looks at her angrily and says there is no way that is true. Daniel comforts her that night about the incident. The doctors inform her that Mark is suffering from Capgras syndrome, an illness that makes sufferers of head injuries believe the people around them are imposters.
She has a number of strange and upsetting conversations with Mark where he says people are conspiring against him. He continues to say that she is an imposter. Mark is moved to a rehabilitation facility where he is cared for by a mysterious nurse's aide named Barbara Gillespie. She and Mark quickly develop a close bond which makes Karin feel insecure. Karin continues to visit Mark. Mark becomes fixated on figuring out who is out to get him. Karin brings Mark's dog to the hospital, but Mark claims that the dog is also an imposter.
Karin speaks with Barbara and they have a long conversation about Mark. She learns that Mark has become increasingly interested in the war in Afghanistan. Later, Daniel brings home some books by a neuroscientist named Gerald Weber. Weber writes about cases similar to Mark's. Desperately hoping for a solution, Karin writes an email to Weber, asking for his help and describing Mark's situation. She feels that Daniel has helped her immensely and she has given him nothing in return.
Analysis
Identity is a central theme in the opening section of the book. After the accident, Mark begins the slow process of putting himself back together. Karin observes as his sense of identity slowly returns. He regains some motor skills and basic speech, then gradually becomes able to carry on conversations. However, in a terrible turn of events, he immediately begins accusing Karin of not being his sister. He says that she is an imposter who has been sent to chase him down as part of a conspiracy. This accusation crushes her, as she has dedicated herself wholly to being there for him and being a good sister, so much so that she has given up her job to remain in Kearney. As soon as Mark's sense of identity begins to return, he calls the authenticity of the people around him into question. In this way, the book explores how delicate the mind is. Mark's accident is capable of fundamentally rupturing his sense of self and his relationships with family and friends. This rupture is also reflected in the voice of the book. The early sections that are filtered through Mark's point of view reflect his shattered mental state. In contrast to the sections that revolve around Karen, these passages are characterized by sentence fragments that veer wildly through time. In one moment, Mark is thinking about his father teaching him to swim, then in the next line, he is having flashbacks of the car accident. The style of his sections represents the damaged functioning of his mind.
Care is another key theme in this section. At the beginning of the book, Karin rushes to Kearney to be with her brother after his accident. Despite the fact that they have drifted apart in later years, she remains incredibly devoted to Mark. She spends months in Kearney, watching his gradual recovery. She gives up her job and continues to visit him even after he accuses her of being an imposter. At the end of the section, she even reaches out to a noted neuroscientist in an effort to get care for Mark. Her persistent efforts show how complex and difficult it is to care for someone on a long-term basis. Her actions are not rewarded and she is repeatedly encouraged, for multiple reasons, to give up. The depth of her concern for Mark shows in how steadfast she remains in her devotion to him.
Love is also an important theme in these pages. In a moment of despair, Karin calls her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Riegel. Daniel provides her with a great deal of stability and compassion as she struggles with Mark's illness and difficulties. While she feels more physical desire for her other ex-boyfriend, Robert Karsh, she recognizes that Daniel truly loves her in the way he takes care of her and shows her nearly endless patience. At the same time, their relationship makes her somewhat nervous, as she feels he is constantly providing her comfort while she is giving him nothing in return. The novel explores the complex dynamics of their love: there are genuine feelings in their relationship but their old patterns suggest it is not sustainable.
Environmentalism is also an important theme in the book's opening chapters. There are multiple poetic interludes that describe the lives of the Sandhill cranes that inhabit Kearney and make it a local attraction for birdwatchers. They are depicted as being ancient and wise, existing as part of natural forces that predate human existence. In contrast to the human characters, they are impartial observers of the world around them and are more attuned to its subtle changes. Powers himself seems to share Daniel's sense that the cranes are nobler than their human counterparts, as they live for the purposes of mating and migration. In this way, the narrator seems to side with Daniel and his coworkers at the crane refuge, as the cranes are described as beautiful and invaluable. Like Mark's sections, the literary form of the passages focusing on the cranes reflects some of their subject's core characteristics. Powers shifts into a more lyrical register, framing the birds as almost mythical, in an effort to show their connection to the cycles of the natural world. Unlike the human characters, the cranes are not trapped in the world of verbal lies and concealed identities. Instead, they are driven and united by a shared purpose: to mate and migrate.
The novel's opening sets up its central conflict: Mark's slow recovery and development of Capgras. At the same time, it also poses its main mystery regarding the events that occurred on North Line road, the night of Mark's accident. As Karin returns to Kearney, she is forced to reckon with the past as she works to care for Mark even as he roundly rejects her as his sister. All the while, the Sandhill cranes sit in the backdrop, stoic observers of human mistakes, as they make their yearly migration.
