The novel begins with a prologue in the form of a script. A large screen announces that the Fletcher Correctional Players will be performing The Tempest, and soon the play commences. However, just a few lines into the first scene, the action stops and the room goes pitch black. Shots are heard outside, and the audience is frightened. An unfamiliar voice warns them to stay still and stop talking.
In a series of flashbacks, Felix Phillips recalls the events that brought him to his current job teaching theater at the Fletcher Correctional Center, a local prison. Twelve years ago, he was the esteemed Artistic Director of one of Canada’s most prominent theater festivals. He’s a professional success, but his life is marred by the deaths of his wife Nadia, who died of an infection after giving birth, and of their daughter Miranda, who caught meningitis three years later. Still in mourning for his toddler daughter, Felix devotes himself to a spectacular production of The Tempest; Miranda is named after one if its characters and he hopes that staging the play will be a “reincarnation” for her. However, at this point Felix’s assistant Tony Price, who for years has done all the thankless logistical work necessary to fund and operate the festival, reveals a nasty surprise: the Festival’s board has decided to fire Felix, citing mental instability after his recent bereavement, and replace him with Tony himself. Tony claims that he wasn’t involved in the decision, but Felix knows he orchestrated the whole thing.
Without his career and his family, Felix is completely adrift; driving through the Ontario countryside after leaving the festival for good, he spots a tiny wooden cottage built into the side of a hill. He decides that he will move here to retreat from the world and avoid letting others witness the spectacle of his professional downfall. He arranges to rent the cottage from Maude, its surly owner, and completely disappears from his old life. He even creates a new name for himself—F. Duke—which he uses to introduce himself to Maude and open a P.O. box and a new bank account.
For years Felix lies low in the cottage, marinating in his resentment of Tony and grief for Miranda. He tries to develop hobbies but can’t interest himself in anything outside the world of theater. His favorite amusement is using the Internet to stalk Tony, who eventually leaves the theater and rises through the ranks of provincial politics.
In his loneliness, Felix begins to imagine that the deceased Miranda is visiting him and keeping him company. At first she appears as a young girl, and Felix takes care of her by “helping” her learn her multiplication tables and reading children’s books out loud. Over the years she seems to become a teenager, and “forces” Felix to remember to eat and cook healthy meals. On an intellectual level Felix knows this is a fantasy, but that doesn’t make his delusions less real. When one day he truly seems to hear Miranda singing outside, he tells himself that he needs to make a change in his life.
Accordingly, Felix answers a job listing for a teacher in the Literacy Through Literature program at the local prison. The program’s coordinator, Estelle, interviews him and immediately deduces who he is; full of admiration for his past work, she gives him the job and agrees not to tell anyone his real identity. In turn, Felix insists on changing the course to fit his own interests: he’s not going to teach short stories or novels, but will stage one Shakespeare play each year. Estelle doesn’t believe he’ll be able to accomplish this with a cast of prisoners, some of whom can barely read, but she allows him to try.
Although it’s hard at first, Felix develops a popular and successful program at the prison. He teaches each play the same way: first he and his students analyze the main themes together and discuss the backstory and motivation of each character. Then Felix casts the play and directs the production, which is eventually filmed and shown to the entire prison via TV. He insists that his students interact with and respect the original text, but he also allows them to rewrite and modernize certain parts, and gives them a lot of leeway regarding costumes, sets, and special effects. He always chooses political dramas like Julius Caesar and Macbeth; the prisoners identify with and are interested in the intrigue and backstabbing that the plays contain.
Just before Felix is about to start the fourth iteration of his course, Estelle informs him that this year, two government Ministers are going to come to the prison and view the final production; one of them is Tony and the other is Sal O’Nally, an older man who helped Felix’s nemesis get his start in politics. Funding for the program has been under threat for months, but Estelle hopes that a successful visit will convince the politicians of its importance. Suddenly feeling that his revenge is at hand, Felix impulsively tells her that this year’s play will be The Tempest—news which disconcerts Estelle, since as a romance it’s far less likely to generate enthusiasm among the prisoners.
At first, she’s right—everyone is disappointed that there are no fight scenes in The Tempest and no one wants to play Ariel, an un-masculine fairy-like spirit, or Miranda, a young girl. However, Felix gradually wins them around by convincing them that Ariel is more like a superhero than a fairy and, more excitingly, promising to hire a real woman to play Miranda. The actress he eventually tracks down is Anne-Marie Greenland, whom he had planned to cast as Miranda in his original, aborted production of The Tempest; now she’s a struggling actress and dancer who’s initially suspicious at the idea of participating in a prison production but eventually succumbs to Felix’s enthusiasm. He’s also interested to find that Caliban, the play’s villain, is very popular among the prisoners, who identify with his poverty and oppression at Prospero’s hands.
Felix has a plan for using the production to achieve his personal revenge against Tony and Sal, but he’s not sure if it can succeed, or if he has the courage to try it. Rehearsals go poorly at first, but with Felix’s determination—as well as Anne-Marie’s increasing involvement and help with choreography—they improve. The prisoners write innovative raps from the perspective of Caliban and Antonio. Meanwhile, the ghostly Miranda reads Felix’s copy of the script and becomes fascinated with the play; although she’s angry when Felix explains she can’t play the heroine, she eventually agrees to “understudy” Ariel’s part and accompanies Felix to rehearsal, saying the lines in his ear.
One day, Estelle summons Felix to lunch to confide a rumor that Sal and Tony are going to cancel the literacy program after seeing the play, in a bid to seem tough and frugal to their constituents. Estelle is furious but Felix, finally committing to his plan, tells her that he knows a way to save the program. She agrees to help in any way she can.
The day of the performance arrives. Sal and Tony arrive, feeling complacent and bored; they don’t care about impressing the prisoners, who can’t vote. They’re accompanied by Lonnie Gordon, once the chair of the Makeshiweg Festival Board, now a local political fundraiser; Sebert Stanley, another politician who’s preparing to run against Sal in an upcoming election; and Frederick O’Nally, Sal’s son and an aspiring but so far unsuccessful director. They enter the prison, where actors in pirate costumes give them ginger ale in glasses marked specifically for each man. As described in the prologue, the play begins and then quickly stops. The men conclude that a prison riot is happening. Unseen men grab Frederick and take him away, to Sal’s distress.
Soon, more men march the politicians to another cell, where they are left alone. Sal and Lonnie fall asleep, knocked out by their spiked soda. Tony and Sebert begin to discuss the election. Tony, who is ready to jettison Sal and throw in his lot with Sebert, suggests that they kill Sal and Lonnie and blame their deaths on the prisoners. Meanwhile, in another room Anne-Marie, dressed as Miranda, comforts the confused and worried Frederick. She tells him that a crazy man who thinks he’s Prospero is playing some kind of prank, and that Frederick needs to read out all his monologues to appease him. Taking the script, Frederick starts declaiming Ferdinand’s love speeches to Miranda.
A sudden clap of thunder wakes Sal and Lonnie up and the cell’s door opens; music lures the politicians down the hall and into another room, where a bowl of grapes is waiting. Sal, Sebert, and Tony eat the grapes, which Felix has injected with psychedelic drugs; soon they are all writhing on the floor, gripped by a bad trip.
When the effects of the drugs are finally subsiding, Felix—who has orchestrated the entire spectacle with the aid of his special effects guru, a prisoner called 8Handz—makes his grand appearance to the men, who are shocked and horrified to find themselves at the mercy of the man they once ousted from his job. Felix reveals that he has recorded their drug-induced craze, as well as Tony’s treacherous conversation, and presents them with a list of demands: everyone has to apologize for their behavior, they must give Felix his own job back, and Tony and Sebert must withdraw from politics. Reluctantly, they agree. Felix allows Sal to reunite with Frederick, who announces that he’s fallen in love with Anne-Marie. Soon, everyone leaves the classroom wing to attend a small party with the Warden and the prison officials; no one says a word about what has just happened.
Some days after the rogue play, Felix holds a cast party for the prisoners, in which he distributes contraband cigarettes as a reward for their work. At this point, groups of prisoners present reports on the “afterlives” of different characters—what they think happens to them after the end of the play. Everyone debates whether Prospero, restored to his dukedom, will manage to keep his power this time, or if he will be foiled by Antonio once again.
Now that the play is over and Felix has finally achieved his revenge, he’s liberated to make some changes in his own life as well. He has his old job back, but rather than trying to rack up more directorial achievements he focuses on training Frederick and Anne-Marie, who are now dating and whom he is grooming to eventually take over the festival. For his own part, he’s agreed to accompany Estelle on a cruise to the Caribbean. He doesn’t even have to pay his ticket, as long as he gives some lectures on his prison work to the other passengers; he’s also arranged to take 8Handz, who has received early parole, with them. Dominated by his feelings of loss, Felix has always been resistant to the idea of a romance with Estelle; now, he’s beginning to reconsider.
As he’s packing up his few possessions, Felix looks at the photograph of three-year-old Miranda he’s always kept on his night stand. He realizes that conjuring up her presence all these years doesn’t preserve her spirit but traps them both in a haze of grief. He tells her that it’s time to “be free,” and he feels that she is.
