The Echo Maker

Karin decides not to tell Mark about the olanzapine, and her refusal feels to Weber like a confirmation of all his self-doubts. He returns to New York, still having accomplished nothing.

Karin and Daniel attend a city council meeting about the proposed development near the cranes’ refuge. Daniel speaks passionately against the project, but his messianic fervor is off-putting to the audience. Karsh argues that the development won’t harm the cranes and will attract and manage more tourists to enjoy the birds. Barbara is at the meeting. Afterward Karin introduces her to Daniel, who realizes that Barbara’s voice is familiar from somewhere.

Weber tells Sylvie about his attraction to Barbara. He denies that he has any physical desire for her, but she reminds him of himself in a way that Sylvie does not.

Karin finally decides to tell Mark about the olanzapine treatment. Mark sees the choice as a kind of death but agrees to consider it. If the real Karin ever comes back, he still wants the fake Karin to care about him at least a little.

Daniel visits Mark. Their falling out happened because Daniel made a pass at him, and Mark reacted violently. They resolve their feelings about Daniel’s attraction to Mark. Barbara arrives, and Daniel leaves in a hurry. When he gets home, he remembers why Barbara’s voice seems so familiar: She is the investigator who quizzed him on the phone about the crane refuge two months before Mark’s accident.

Mark decides to start the olanzapine. Four days later, he phones Karin and tells her that he died on the operating table the night of the accident, and he has been walking around dead for a year. The next morning, Mark tries to overdose on his medication. When he recovers, he demands to talk to Weber in person.

Sylvie doesn’t understand Weber’s sense of responsibility or his need to see Mark. He can’t explain to her that it is because he wants Sylvie to be able to see him as a different person.

Karsh’s development gets the green light to buy water shares that will further deplete the crane habitat. In reaction, Daniel quits his job with the sanctuary. Karin tells him she has found out from Karsh that the consortium is planning a zoo and a water park that will destroy the cranes’ staging ground on the river. Daniel takes the information about the development consortium to the city council.

Weber arrives in Kearney. At the hospital, Mark greets Weber gratefully. Mark is afraid the olanzapine is going to erase the person he has been for the last year. He asks if it is possible to cut out one part of the brain without killing all the other little parts talking to each other. Weber assures him that it is. Mark asks if it is possible to put something in, like transplanting the amygdala of a crane into a human brain with the aim of saving a species, but Mark doesn’t know whether that species is the cranes or the humans.

Weber goes to Barbara’s house. He reflects that the person he was before—husband, researcher, writer, teacher—is already gone. Being with Barbara can’t make it any worse. They make love. Weber has known for a long time now that she is a news reporter. He asks her what story she was covering when she came to Kearney.

She admits that she was covering a story about water rights. She learned that the development would destroy the crane habitat, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The pressure of her job was already breaking her, and the story was the last straw.

Barbara goes to the hospital and tells Mark that she was the white pillar Mark saw in the road. She had pulled off the road and stepped out in front of Mark’s speeding truck. He swerved to avoid her and rolled the truck. Before he was taken to surgery, Barbara went to his room. He couldn’t speak, so he wrote the note for her. Barbara had been working as an aide in the hospital as cover for her investigation, so she got herself assigned to Mark’s case to keep an eye on him. Mark feels betrayed. He spent a year looking for the person who saved him, thinking she would have answers for him, and all the time, she was lying to him.

Part 5 opens with a poetic passage about the cranes that links them to the past and future. After the cranes, the river, and humanity are gone, nature will take back the Earth and nothing will be remembered.

Daniel has gone to Alaska, following the cranes to their northern breeding ground. Karin is staying to work with the refuge in Kearney. Karin returns to the hospital and finds a new Mark, one she has never met. He recognizes her as his real sister. Mark tells Karin to ask Barbara to go to work at the bird refuge. He reflects that if he could go for a year not knowing himself, then no one can really be sure they are who they think they are. Even if everything is an illusion, it’s just as good as the real thing.

Weber returns home to Sylvie feeling alienated from himself. All he has left is his homing instinct—like the cranes—calling him back to where he came from.