A Japanese man, after he moves away from Japan where he lived on the side of a volcano and farmed yams, comes to the United States where, during WWII, he is interned at the Tule Lake Segregation Center. After he is implicated in a riot at the internment camp, he is sent to the stockades — a solitary confinement — where he tunnels his way out of the prison and travels west, where he plans to flee to Mexico. He is intercepted by a harsh winter storm that leaves him unconscious under the snow. He is happened upon by a band of Natives, the Clock People, who take him in. After the Great San Fransisco Earthquake of 1906, the Clock People took the destruction of the city as a cosmic sign and migrated into Sierras where they “generated the stalk of a new culture.” Over the course of almost thirty years, the Japanese man, colloquially misnomered the Chink, is ingratiated into their culture, where he witnesses their incredible rituals: every day, a band of the Clock People go underground and navigate a complex labyrinth — the Great Burrows — at the center of which are two clockworks. The first clockwork measures the time of the Clock People’s twenty-six-hour day, and the second, which harnesses the highly attuned intuitions of blind catfish, warns of earthquakes that the Clock People record weeks in advance of their occurrence. The man establishes his home among the Clock People, and both keeps the Natives informed of national news and keeps away outsiders. After years, and on the cusp of the “Red Power” movement, a band of younger Natives venture out and return to the land to ask the man to join their cause. He refuses, and is later inducted into the Clock People's society as a shaman.