In intertwined stories, A Ladder of Bones tells a series of narratives that take place in West Africa, Canada, the United States and the Caribbean. Siaka becomes a child soldier in Sierra Leone after being compelled to shoot his six-year-old brother. Melvin witnesses the murder of his parents by young Liberian soldiers. As a toddler, Timothy survives by sucking at his dead mother's breast, while Iona, a rebellious Jamaican girl, narrowly escapes rape at the hands of her drug-addicted mother's lover. And then there is Enilolobo: a mysterious child who appears on a Canadian street one day with two navels. Their lives become interwoven, but this tapestry unravels as the characters move back to West African soil as young adults. They are forced to relive the nightmare of their earlier existence when one of the characters joins others to hunt them, seeing not human beings but a repository for rage.