Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of drug abuse and addiction.

The novel begins at the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, an island-forest luxury resort that caters to wealthy tourists. As a Cathedral Forest Guide, Jacinda “Jake” Greenwood feeds tourists’ misguided belief that despite the Great Withering, a natural calamity that destroyed much of the world’s forests and covered many of the world’s largest cities in dust, “all is not lost” (3).

Jake leads a new group of visitors, called Pilgrims, on a tour of the Cathedral. Though she begrudges the Pilgrims’ privilege and superficial interest in the environment, Jake works as a Forest Guide to pay off her postgraduate student debt. She brings the Pilgrims to see the tallest Douglas fir in the Cathedral, nicknamed “God’s Middle Finger” by her and her colleague, Knut. A celebrity Pilgrim asks Jake to estimate the Douglas fir’s value, but Jake evades the question.

During the tour, Jake notices that two of the firs are sick. She has always been assured of the climate on Greenwood Island but now fears that the Withering may soon reach the Cathedral.