Mary McGahern goes off to university from the small town of Leitrim Falls. Mary was mostly schooled at home by a self-taught, highly literate, widower farmer father, which has always made her an oddity. Professor Jake Flynn, nearing retirement, despairs of contemporary higher education in English Literature, which has moved away from reading and studying the best that has been thought and written to viewing literature as valuable only to the extent that it contributes to improving the world. Mary becomes Professor Flynn's student in two courses. The English Department's rare, autographed edition of Joyce's Ulysses is stolen from a display case. Detective Gurmeet finds that Jake Flynn stole the rare edition of Ulysses. While being examined for mental competency in the Princess Diana Mental Health Center, Jake commits suicide. Mary's father is killed in a car accident and she returns home to see to the farm. In equal parts Joyce and Hemmingway, Plaguing Jake heralds a powerful return to literary storytelling and captures and essential Canadian narrative.