Felix is the Artistic Director at the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival and is planning to perform a version of Shakespeare's The Tempest that is innovative, creative, and new to audiences everywhere. During rehearsal for the play, however, he is informed by Tony Price, the fundraising manager, that his contract has been terminated and Tony will be taking over as Artistic Director. Blindsided, Felix boils with anger and frustration but eventually agrees to leave.
Desiring isolation, Felix moves into a small shack in a remote area of the town and thinks constantly of how he will enact his revenge on Tony and the board members who fired him. While in the shanty, he frequently imagines that his late daughter, Miranda, is there with him; these fantasies help ease his grief over her untimely death. Eventually, Felix gets a job as the teacher for the Literacy Through Literature Program at Fletcher Correctional Facility, a program designed to help prisoners engage with the themes and skills of literature through hands-on, creative learning. Felix teaches the class for twelve years, continuing to imagine Miranda by his side, until he decides that it is finally time to bring her back to life. Felix announces during his twelfth year that, rather than performing a tragedy (his typical screening), his class will perform The Tempest.
The players are not initially enthused about the production, and so Felix spends a number of classes encouraging them to discuss the various characters in the play. He raises questions such as how audiences are supposed to feel about Prospero, the patriarchal protagonist of the play who was usurped as Duke of Milan by his brother Antonio, among other debates about the virtues of Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda. Soon, the men are engrossed in the play and begin taking the initiative to craft their own interpretive performances of different characters and events. Felix enlists the help of Anne-Marie Greenland, a young actress, to play the role of Miranda in the screening. Felix himself plays Prospero.
Felix's performance of The Tempest is aimed at enacting his revenge on Tony Price and Sal O'Nally, who by this time are serving as ministers of justice and are coming to see the screening of the play at Fletcher. When the day arrives, Felix uses the hacking skills of 8Handz, one of the players, to manipulate the video feed and present a different performance for the ministers than for the rest of the prison. The players, dressed as goblins, capture the men, give them hallucinatory drugs, and convince them that they have become part of a prison riot. After the ministers have been sufficiently terrified, Felix appears, dressed as Prospero, and reveals his master plan. He then demands his old job back, and the ministers agree to his terms.
In the aftermath of the event, Felix finishes his class at Fletcher by having groups of actors speculate about the afterlives of various characters in The Tempest. Some groups stick to the happy endings—Caliban, for instance, is represented as a music star—while others think of darker stories for their characters post-play. Felix is proud to see how invested the students have become and to observe their growth as students of literature.
In the final moments of the novel, Felix once again imagines his daughter Miranda by his side. No longer paralyzed by his grief and desire for revenge, he announces, "to the elements be free," and essentially lets go of his compulsion to keep her memory stagnant by his side forever.
