This book is about the life of a dog, Mr Bones, who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that his homeless master is dying.
The story, set in the early 1990s, is told through the eyes of Mr Bones, who has an internal monologue in English. The story centres on his last journey with his ailing master, Willy G Christmas, to Baltimore, but the details of both of their early lives are told in flashback.
The title of the book comes from the concept of the afterlife as proposed by Christmas, a self-titled poet, who believed it was a beautiful place called Timbuktu. A major running theme in the book is Mr Bones' worry that dogs will not go to Timbuktu, and he won't see Willy again after death.