30-something David Rennison is a disillusioned banker fleeing a failed relationship and the rat race of Montreal for the warmer climes of the Bahamian port of Pigeon Cay. A fair-weather expatriate, he has come to the subtropics in search of exotic escape, but stumbles upon genteel corruption, white-collar crime, racism, and murder. Amid the turmoil of illegal Haitian refugees, voodoo rituals, and the powdery trail of drug smugglers, Rennison peers into the lives of those that both create and inherit his purgatory. His botanist handbook gradually assumes the voice of a confessional diary, betraying details of a burgeoning affair capable of remedy or poison.