Nwokocha's subject is the tight weave of sacred and secular life in Haitian Vodou, where spirits bear on what Black practitioners do from one day to the next.

That connection, she argues, shows itself in the interplay among four things: ceremonies held in public, the material aesthetics that surround them, the adornment of the body, and possession by the spirits. The book treats these as one dynamic set of relations rather than separate topics.