In plague-ridden eighteenth-century Philadelphia, a young itinerant black preacher searches for a mysterious, endangered African woman. His struggle to find her and save them both plummets them both into the nightmare of a society violently splitting itself into white and black. Spiraling outward from the core image of a cattle killing—the Xhosa people's ritual destruction of their herd in a vain attempt to resist European domination—the novel expands its narrator's search for meaning and love into the America, Europe and South Africa of yesterday and today.