The story is set in the days before the revolution that deposed Baby Doc , and makes several swings between Haiti under the corrupt and repressive military rule, and the small Texas town of Longbottom. A U.S medical team comprising four physicians, a black dentist, Dr. Bailey, and two nurses, Zulla, also black, and Pam fly to Haiti under the leadership of Dr. Bone to conduct free clinics as a start of a help the poor program. During the stopover in Port-au-Prince, they witness a rada(mild) voodoo ceremony, meet shady Minister of Health de Villeneueve, co-sponser of the program, and discover that half their seperately medical supplies are missing.
The team travels by minivan though the bleak countryside and over the mountains to the northern city of Cap Haitian, their base for the clinics, driven by the 20-year-old live wire Marcel, who has an important part to play in the story. Bone has a hard time maintaining harmony among his temperamental fellow physicians, one of whom, a married man falls for Pam. The team is put up at the once prosperous hotel owned by a German expatriot Hans Boch. The first and third clinics are conducted in the church of Reverend Purdy, something of a stufed shirt, who has a severly depressed wife, and in the course of his stay Bone befriends Judy Cawthorn. who is doing research on voodoo, and Father Morissot,a Catholic priest who enlists Bone''s aide in saving the life of a certain Henri who has been place under a death curse by the powerful and slightly crazed houngan, or head voodoo priest, Chauvelin. During the second clinic, held in a small outlying school/church, Bone receives a threat from a Chauvelin henchman, and on his way back to Cap Haitian glimpses a zombie. Untoward events occur: Bone is nearly struck by a speeding car (careless driving? a warning?), and one morning comes upon signs of a voodoo curse ouside his door. Bailey, his interest piqued by voodoo, visits the home of Mambo Leboux, a local voodoo priestess, and finds evidence of the missing medical supplies.
Back in Longbottom, bone''s friend Hal, owner of a furniture store, as well as a Justice-of-the-Peace and the towns undertaker, learns that Zulla''s husband Jake has seemingly disappeared. Jake, spied on by town gossip Aunt Povey, has been having a fling with a beautician, Gladys, who has drug connections, as Jake once had. Hal and his wife have a wayward adopted son who later features in the plot.
In Cap Haitian, de Villeneuve goes to Leboux''s house to meet Chavelin and receive from him half the money from the black market sale of the stolen medical supplies.
Chauvelin, who has put a death curse on a woman who offended him, kidnaps Bailey and arranges to release Bailey if Bone will not undertake to interfere with the curse. Bone is dramacically relieved of his dilemma by Marcel, and boch rescuses Bailey. while a captive, Bailey had found a phial of zombie powder and takes it out of curosity.
Home in Longbottom and reconciled with Jake, Zulla persuades members of her Ebony social club to participate in a trial "rada" voodoo ceremony with largely comic results. Morissot calls Bone to say Henri has been poisoned by Chauvelin, and Bone flies back to Cap Haitian to try and protect the priest, now under threats himself, and see that Chauvelin in brought to justice. In a remote village Chauvelin is about to perform a petro(sinister) voodoo ceremony at which he will sacrifice a baby. Bone goes there with Marcel and Leboux''s marksman son Claude. The baby is saved, but Chauvelin escapes (later to be shot by Claude, Bone learns).
Bailey has become obsessed with the beautiful Zulla and tries to seduce her, but is repulsed. Though a successful dentist, Bailey has deep psychological scars from hi
