When the death of Rudy Lafferty is foretold, he starts a two-and-a-half-year journey without the gift of sleep and within the city limits of Tacoma, Washington, attempting to survive in solitude as his hometown is transformed for reasons he does not comprehend.

Through a layered pandemic landscape of emptied houses and broken interactions, of various spirits let loose by catastrophe, and the poetic rants of the infected, Rudy encounters the odd occupants of Tacoma, human and crow, living and deceased.

This novel is not just plaguesongs and crowsongs and ghostsongs. It is also love songs and death songs and moon songs and rain songs and nurse songs and ant songs and starvation songs. It is full of tall tales and books that are written out one copy at a time.