Sidney Marsh is a Mississippi-born, New York-based travel agent. She and her best friend and business partner, Jay Wilson, are struggling to remain standing in a world where the ground is shifting. Their boss at Itchy Feet Travel has a new scheme to attract customers--safari tour packages. He sends Sidney and Jay on a familiarization trip to Cape Town and safari country to check out the accommodations and confirm that the experience lives up to the hype in the brochures. Sidney looks forward to the deluxe trip and so does Jay, despite his deathly fear of animals, both wild and domesticated. Their experience will be far wilder than either could have imagined. First Sidney stumbles upon a suspicious rendezvous and possible murder scene in Cape Town. After Sidney's pocket is picked on a cable-car ride up Table Mountain, she suspects that someone in their group is an imposter, a suspicion that is soon confirmed. At Leopard Dance--the luxury game lodge near Kruger National Park that serves as their base camp--one of the other agents on the fam trip turns up dead. Sidney carries on a risky flirtation with a handsome Afrikaner, who may or may not be the latest manifestation of the Marsh Curse, which seems to jinx her every relationship. And Sidney and Jay discover that they have far more to fear from predatory humans than wild animals.