the stories in "the conjure woman" all share the same frame narrative and dueling voices. the narrator is a white northerner named john who has come to the south because his white wife, named annie, is in poor health and requires a warmer climate. also, john wants to own and operate a vineyard. john passes along the "conjure tales" told to him by uncle julius mcadoo, an ex-slave who serves as both a trickster figure and a subversive witness. john, who prefaces each tale with a supercilious monologue, is captivated by the pre-civil war history of the region but skeptical of mcadoo's clever and sometimes crafty accounts, while annie is more sensitive to lived experience and sometimes glimpses the covert moral in mcadoo's stories.