A photographer's record of Vodou as Haitians practise it, drawn from work Galembo began in 1996 after years documenting Edo ritual dress in Nigeria and Candomble communities in northern Brazil. Her portraits favor costume, altar and ceremonial setting: cemeteries whitewashed for the November gathering of the Gede, temple interiors, priests and priestesses photographed in the regalia of the spirits they serve.

Fleurant's introduction supplies the history the images assume, running from the arrival of enslaved Africans on Hispaniola after 1502 through the French seizure of the island's western third in 1697 and the plantation expansion that followed, and treating Vodou as the memory of home those captives carried and kept.

Short texts by Vodou scholars, practitioners and artists accompany the plates, with a glossary and bibliography. The aim throughout is to set the tradition against the sensational reputation it carries abroad.