Kate Patton leaves her job as food editor with a New Orleans newspaper the day her husband threatens her life while netting crabs on Lake Pontchartrain. She flees to Roselea plantation in central Louisiana, a residence for artists and writers as long as they are productive. Kate intends to write about meat pies, a specialty of the area. At dinner, the writer Paul is poisoned. Amelia, a descendant of the People of Color, serves the meal and quickly points a finger at the owners retarded son, and several other boarders. She feels that white people cheated her family out of the plantation that her ancestor Congo Liz built. When a plantation worker becomes a second victim of poisoning, the police arrest a painter discovered to have a syringe containing traces of cyanide. Kate witnesses Amelia and her brother performing voodoo ceremonies in the backyard and uncovers the history tan-skinned descendants of Congo Liz and the French Commandant who freed her from slavery.