A thread that binds the ten stories in What the Trumpeter Said is their locations—exotic for some, routine for others—like life itself. Set across Botswana and other regions of Southern Africa, as well as parts of Eastern Europe and the South Pacific, the stories feature ordinary people in extraordinary situations, disentangling themselves from ambiguous moral challenges. Several of the stories highlight moving between belief systems, featuring local residents and expatriate aid workers wrestling with racial typecasting and cultural fluidity.

In one story, a Jesuit priest in Botswana is confronted by a tormentor from his past, when he harbored South African freedom fighters during the apartheid struggle and was later victimized by a BOSS mail bomb. In another, the kgosi of a small village in Northern Botswana details a heart-wrenching betrayal he committed in the aftermath of the Zimbabwean War of Independence. In a third story, a Kalahari Desert schoolteacher who is dying of cancer endeavors, against odds and logic, to build an Olympic-sized village swimming pool with the help of a devoted student. In all, the stories capture the wholly human longing for redemption, set against the enhanced mirror of cultural understanding and tolerance.