Querry, a world-famous architect, is the victim of an attack of indifference, no longer finding meaning in art or pleasure in life. Arriving anonymously at a Congo leper village, he is diagnosed as the mental equivalent of a 'burnt-out case', a leper who has gone through a stage of mutilation. However, as Querry loses himself in work for the lepers, his disease of mind slowly approaches a cure. Then the white community finds out who Querry is...

In a country that appears to have forgotten the importance of remembering, a former schoolteacher and bar regular nicknamed Broken Glass has been elected to record their stories for posterity. But Broken Glass fails spectacularly at staying out of trouble as one denizen after another wants to rewrite history in an attempt at making sure his portrayal will properly reflect their exciting and dynamic lives. Despondent over this apparent triumph of self-delusion...

The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction...

"Michael MacDougall is a talented trauma surgeon whose life in Seattle is slowly unraveling. Frustrated as an ER doctor and his marriage in trouble, he volunteers with a medical aid charity in the Congo. Soon disconsolate at the lives he cannot save in the desperate conditions of the region, he is shattered by a roadside confrontation with the mercenary Mai Mai that results in unthinkable losses. Back home in Seattle, he is haunted by his experiences...

After their Congolese village is destroyed by a milita group, eleven-year-old Therese works with humanitarian aid groups to find her brother, while her mother, Luna, escapes from the milita's camp and begins to search for her children.