Just a Piece of Red String

In antebellum Natchez, Mississippi, cousins Sawyer Dundee and Solomon Witcher come into manhood. Both cousins attend a party at Clifton, a mansion owned by the Surgets. Sawyer remains in Natchez to run the family sawmill. Solomon, realizing his personal luck, charm, and persuasiveness, strikes out on his own to seek legendary buried treasure of Natchez Trace outlaws and Natchez Indians. He journeys to Louisiana to the Troyville Indian Mounds and the French settlements south of the Red River in Avoyelles Parish. He finds success near Marksville, where he hears of a redheaded female healer who had visited the area. In New Orleans to invest in the slave trade and play poker, Solomon encounters the redheaded “Egypt” and her followers. Solomon, after learning of the red string legend, gris-gris bags, and a street preacher named Xenophanes, joins Egypt in a plot of vengeance that ends with voodoo justice imposed upon a New Orleans businessman in the Girod Street Cemetery.