The Cross on the Drum

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Synopsis

A strange young man, Barry Clinton. Unlike most young missionaries who came to the island to save souls, this one had come with a belligerent skepticism and a driving determination to battle sickness and starvation. He had come to the Ile de Vent with a Bible and a few meager medical supplies-ready to make the little Caribbean island a better place in which to live. The Cross on the Drum is the story of the strange friendship of Barry Clinton and Cactus Laroche-high priest of vodun, the savage, ritualistic religion which no white man had ever dared defy. It tells of the tormented, embittered passions of the other islanders-white and black-and how they undermined the bond between these two men, changing their mutual respect into vengeful hatred, and turning the island's drowsy, sunlit tranquility into a feverish, drum-pounding battleground.