In the title story, an archaeologists returns to the ancient Mayan city of Caracol in Belize, drawn by the power of lucid dreams, those in which the person is self-conscious and aware during the dream. He discovers a living ghost of a Mayan girl saved from sacrifice by a Jaguar God, and now must confront a bizarre tribe of Indian looters and return her parent's bones to their ancient grave. In "Flesh of the Gods," a self-styled mycologist travels to Mexico in 1956 to become the first white man to experience psilocybin Mexicana, the magic mushrooms of the indigenous Mazateca. On his subsequent trip he is joined by two chemists: one the designer of LSD, seeking to replicate the mushroom chemical, the other a secret operative for the CIA, in search for a mind controlling substances. The influx of western drug seekers with vain agendas proves devastating to the Mexican village where they come from. "In the Valley of Decision" takes place on the Caribbean island of Dominica during its turbulent independence from Britain in 1980. An American yacht captain becomes an unwitting smuggler in an overthrow involving a group of conspirators including greed soldiers bent on drug money and the cold-blooded Dreads, renegade Rastafarians whose fate is controlled as much by traditional magic as the police trying to stop them.