Eradication

by Jonathan Miles

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction; Nature & the Environment; Satire

Synopsis

From acclaimed author Jonathan Miles (“a writer so virtuosic that readers will feel themselves becoming better, more observant people from reading him"—Los Angeles Times) comes a blackly comic literary gem in which a broken man confronts a broken world on an uninhabited Pacific island.

“Beautifully weird, eerie, unexpected — a story for our times.” —Kevin Barry, author of The Heart in Winter and Night Boat to Tangier

Reeling from tragedy, a former jazz musician–turned–schoolteacher named Adi answers a job listing advertising a chance to save the world. The assignment: to spend five weeks alone on the tiny, isolated Pacific Island of Santa Flora righting an ecological balance that’s gone severely out of whack, with the aim of preserving countless bird and plant species from certain extinction. What follows, however, is anything but balanced. The threats to the once-Edenic island, Adi soon learns, aren’t exactly what his employers said they were—and, complicating things further, he discovers he’s not alone on the island. Fearful for his own life, and for the fate of the island's, Adi spends his sun-drenched days rooting out the true threat to Santa Flora, and, by extension, to the world it occupies—and the desperate steps he must take to eradicate it. 

A desert-island meditation on the contours of love and grief and solitude, as well as jolt to your emotional core, Eradication is an utterly unforgettable reading experience, a narrative tour de force, and the work of a truly singular imagination. With this fourth work of fiction, Jonathan Miles, “a fluid, confident, and profoundly talented writer” (Dave Eggers) has truly come into his own.

Release date: February 10, 2026

Publisher: Doubleday

Print pages: 176

Sample

The first sailor was beefy and tall and already sweating before the sun was risen. The second sailor was missing.

He’ll be along, the first sailor told Adi. With a flashlight jammed between his teeth he was filling out clipboarded forms and humming what sounded like a melody braked to quarter-speed, groany and dirgelike and, for Adi, unsettling in the predawn dark. The boat, a thirty-foot center console with two giant outboard motors, kept thunking the dock where Adi stood as the sailor went rummaging about the deck, opening and closing storage hatches to dash items from his checklist. He’ll be along, he repeated, though to whom it was unclear.

After a while the sailor clapped his hands together and motioned to Adi’s gear on the dock, which Adi handed down: two fat duffels, a backpack, four cellophane-sealed boxes, a pair of heavy plastic crates, a satellite phone pack, and a long thin black case secured with padlocks. There was no mistaking the latter as anything but a rifle case, and the sailor’s hum shifted to a pitchy song of vigilance as it got passed over the water. He parked it with the rest of the gear at the boat’s stern and then stood for several awkward moments shining his flashlight up at Adi.

You’re not a scientist.

No. Adi squinted, his fingers splayed against the flashlight beam. I’m not.

At this the sailor lowered his light, frowning. But soon he was nodding at Adi and grinning. Then you’re an assassin, he said, pantomiming a rifle shot. Adi could see the sailor’s broad teeth shining in the dark. A sharpshooter.

Adi shrugged.

A killer, the sailor went on, but this time so acidly that Adi found himself unable to muster any response, not even another shrug.

Just then a pair of headlights entered the harbor. Adi and the sailor watched a taxi thread its way to the dock gate, where a man dragged himself from the back seat and stood swaying, counting out bills for the driver. From the deck the first sailor snorted. I told you he’d be along, he said, but again it was unclear to whom.

The second sailor came swerving down the dock toward the boat. The first sailor whistled low and confirmed what Adi was thinking. He’s shitfaced.

You’re shitfaced! he shouted.

The second sailor brushed by Adi and wobbled onto the deck. This was the mate, Adi deduced, making the first sailor the captain. Short and bald and snake-hip skinny, the mate was the physical opposite of the captain, as in silent-movie comedy duos. He had to steady himself against the pilothouse to tuck his shirt into his pants. Only half made it in.

You’re straight from Angel’s, aren’t you? the captain said.

The mate blew the air from his cheeks and then, sour-faced, placed a palm on his chest, as though he’d tried and failed to expel something.

The captain growled, You haven’t even been home.

The mate ignored him and set himself to work. He hoisted the national flag along with another flag bearing the naval insignia. He unfolded a seat near the stern and with sharp impatient gestures motioned for Adi to board. He freed the dock lines and coiled the ropes and hauled in the fenders while inside the small open pilothouse the captain fired the engines and hummed his drowsy song.

How long will it take us? Adi asked him.

Santa Flora? Six hours. More humming. Maybe longer. Some chop in the water today.

Over the rooftops of the town was rising a thin stripe of dawn. The captain piloted the boat out of the harbor into the slate-colored sea.

Yes, Santa Flora! the captain shouted to the mate, who was leaning over the port-side gunwale, licking his lips. A nice long cruise. We should have music and beer, like at Angel’s.

We should, said the mate, though his curdled expression disagreed.

Half an hour or more passed before anyone spoke again. The captain sipped coffee and hummed and, when the radio squawked, sometimes tilted his thick head toward it. Adi found himself watching the mate, who, pressing his palms to the gunwale, kept dipping his head toward the water. From his lips swung a long rope of drool flickering neon green in the navigation lights’ glow. Adi had presumed that sailors would be immune to seasickness, but then Adi had not been around sailors before. For that matter he’d never been on a boat before, not counting the paddleboats at the capital zoo and a sunset river cruise he’d once taken with his wife. So he didn’t know.

When the captain spoke again, it was as though the previous conversation, about music and beer, had not ended—that it’d merely been paused without anyone’s thoughts drifting in the interim. And some girls too, he said. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It would, groaned the mate.

Cha cha, said the captain, swishing his backside. Cha cha cha.

Ahead Adi saw only bluish-gray water and grayish-blue sky, the water whitecapped, the sky star-flecked. Behind the boat, though, was brewing a sunrise unlike any he could remember seeing: gorgeous and streaky like some big-budget advertisement for divinity, the sky slashed with ribbons of orange and rose and peach and gold and the boat’s deck blushing pink in its reflection. In other company Adi might’ve pointed to it, voiced his awe. But the sailors had clearly seen it, and were as clearly unimpressed.

Over the rim of his coffee cup the captain was grinning at the mate, whose head now drooped overboard. Who were you with at Angel’s, huh?

Weakly, the mate waved him off.

I’ll bet Chita, the captain said. It was Chita, wasn’t it?

The mate’s body heaved.

It’s always Chita with you.

Into the sea went a gush of his insides.

The captain laughed while the mate sputtered and gagged. Poor Chita, he said. He lit a thin cigar and shook out the match. I am going to tell her you retch at just the mention of her name. I’m going to ask her if she thinks this means love.

Again the mate waved him off, before another spout of vomit left him.

We should ask Mister Killer here, the captain said, aiming his cigar at Adi. Should love make you retch?

The word killer piqued the mate. With watery eyes and a glazed chin he lifted his head to assess Adi, who knew he didn’t square with anyone’s image of a killer. He looked instead like what he had been until eleven months ago: a schoolteacher, an amateur jazz clarinetist, a husband, a father. The mate sat blinking at him.

I guess it depends on the love, Adi finally answered.

Yes! the captain shouted, as the mate went back to dangling his head overboard. It depends on the love. He nibbled his cigar and mulled this awhile, having mistaken Adi’s circumspection for profundity. Then with mock courtroom gravity he addressed the mate: Will you define for Mister Killer the nature of your love for Chita?

As if on cue, the mate retched again.

What could he love about her? The captain frowned, mimicking thought. Maybe it’s her hair. Chita has very nice hair. He wiggled his fingers around his head and grinned at the mate, who did not grin back. Silky silky.

He hummed awhile.

Or maybe, let’s see—maybe it’s that magnificent cyst on her shoulder? He turned to Adi, cupping a hand as if holding an invisible grapefruit. It’s enormous. You half expect it to talk, like a pirate’s parrot.

The mate wiped his chin with his forearm, muttering.

No, said the captain, and shook his head and sighed. I suspect the true nature of his love for Chita is that Chita charges less than the other girls at Angel’s.

Adi flushed and turned away, pretending to study something on the horizon.

It is a great romance, the captain went on. Like Romeo and Juliet, I think. But different. Isn’t that right, Bruno?

The mate, drooling into the sea, hoisted a middle finger.

At this the captain laughed, but gently now, almost affectionately, as though some sort of abiding private ritual had been concluded, a routine punishment meted. He suckled his thin cigar and hummed some more before turning back to Adi.

And what about you? Is there a Mrs. Killer?

Adi lowered his eyes.

Ah, well. The captain shrugged. This is good. Otherwise you’d be sad to be leaving her today. You’d be annoying us with all your boohooing.

The risen sun was burning off the last of the fleecy clouds and all the world was blue and getting bluer. The captain’s forecast for choppy seas had proven accurate, and the boat’s hull kept smacking the water instead of gliding through it. To keep from getting bounced overboard Adi stood gripping the pilothouse roof and pinning his foot soles to the deck, bending at the knees with each spumy slap, his jaw clenched to keep his teeth from knocking.

Then he saw the captain motioning, corkscrewing a finger toward the stern.

Three porpoises were chasing the boat, diving in and out of the frothy wake. They were sleek and silver and to Adi seemed magical as mermaids. Soon a fourth porpoise appeared, larger and higher-flying than the others, and for a jittery moment, as it came swiveling through the spindrift, Adi feared it might leap onto the deck. When it didn’t Adi whistled and wagged his head as though astonished by an athletic feat, by a gymnast sticking some implausible landing.

But as the porpoises kept tailing the boat a hazier anxiety began unsettling him. Why were the porpoises doing this? Their expressions—glimpsed briefly through the spray—were impenetrable to him. Were they stalking the boat like wolves, to attack it? Or like carrier pigeons, to warn of something? Or were they mobbing it, like gulls, to drive it away?

He looked to the captain, who must’ve sensed his bewilderment. They’re playing. Like street dogs chasing cars.

Adi nodded and resumed watching until the captain barked to the mate: Hide his gun, Bruno! Mister Killer wants to shoot them!

Adi spun toward the captain, whose rubbery grin was overspreading his face and whose eyebrows were jumping and dancing with a caustic strain of delight.

That’s not true, Adi protested. Don’t say that.

With his thumb and forefinger the captain mimed a pistol shot toward the stern. Ka-blam. Then, with a crooked smile, he fanned his hands in a cavalier shrug.

Killers kill, he said.

The wounded glare Adi leveled at him seemed to take the captain by surprise. With popped eyes and an emphatic chop he motioned to himself and the helm. Like sailors sail!

He squirmed and sputtered, until:

And like mates, hooking a thumb toward Bruno, . . . mate.

The blast of laughter that followed was as though two bombs detonated on the boat, one big, the other small. The captain yowled and stomped and with tears in his eyes staggered to Bruno and repeated what he’d said, like mates mate, the captain’s body jellied with glee and the hungover mate convulsing with high-pitched wheezes, the two of them punching and pawing each other until they collapsed into a lopsided embrace—a junction of dumb rapture that struck Adi as even more alien than whatever the dolphins were up to behind the boat. He glanced back to check on them. It seemed possible the dolphins were laughing too.

Only the sight of Santa Flora on the horizon quelled the hysterics. As soon as Adi alerted them to the distant gray bulge the sailors wiped their eyes and smoothed their shirts and comported themselves like naval officers again. As the island came into sharper view, less a gray bulge now than a beige spearhead, an abrupt and orderly calm seized the boat. Even for himself, Adi couldn’t say whether this calm stemmed from wonder or fear or reverence or dread or merely from the visual cue of the day’s mission, like a factory whistle summoning lunching workers back to their stations. The captain snapped orders and the mate executed them. Adi turned to see what the porpoises were doing but the porpoises were gone.

On the maps Adi had studied, Santa Flora resembled a comma on an otherwise blank page, but from the boat, as they made their westerly approach, he couldn’t distinguish the comma’s head from its tail; to his eye it was all just a uniformly scarpy chunk of land heaved from the sea that, lacking soft slopes or beaches or verdure or really any colors besides khaki and ash and a sparse dingy olive, gave the impression of not wanting to be bothered, of a primordial indifference. From every approach its back seemed turned.

Once we get around the south cape we’ll be landing you at Eremos Cove, the captain told him. There’s just two landing sites on the island. The other is Campo Langosta on the north end, but only at high tide, and Punta Araña can be dicey to get around. You might see fishing boats if you’re up there. They’re illegal. Shark finners from up north. Nasty bastards.

They followed the cliff-indented shoreline south until the comma’s tail petered into a curl of volcanic stacks, dozens and dozens of clustered rock formations like half-submerged ruins of ancient statuary. Then the captain hooked the boat back northward, humming his dreary song while Adi and the mate stood flanking him. Beneath the midday sun the island appeared blanched and shadowless, like an unfinished painting.

You’ll see where we dropped you your water last week, the captain told Adi. Half a pallet of it! Enough for you to make a bubble bath every night. He cocked a bushy eyebrow. Your foundation must have deep pockets.

The captain slid the boat between a pair of contorted rock spires and into the cove called Eremos. The water here was instantly different—turquoise and stilly—as was the coastline, with a narrow orange beach and clumps of what looked like palm trees bunched in the shallows and scattered amid another species of spindly misshapen trees. Adi saw where the sailors had left the half pallet of bottled water on their earlier trip, stacked right beside a primitive hut that he’d been told about, and this abrupt combination of shade, shelter, and gently lapping water relaxed something inside him. The island remained far from welcoming but at least here it wasn’t scowling.

The captain burbled the boat as close to the beach as he could get while the mate dropped the bow anchor. Then the mate leapt into the waist-high water and, carrying the stern anchor, towed the boat in closer to moor it in the sand. He waded back and clapped his hands twice. The captain passed the mate one of Adi’s duffels, which he hauled to the beach, and in this way, item by item, the sailors began moving Adi onto the island.