A first novel from an award winning Kenyan journalist, playwright and poet, Peter Kimani, a one-time writer in residence at the Mesa Refuge in California, who is now making a name for himself as one of Africa's emerging young writers. This is the story of Muriuki, a young man from a Kenyan village who leaves his mother, the rest of his family, and a backbreaking job on a coffee plantation for the city, the pursuit of wealth, and happiness with the love of his childhood, Mumbi. But life is not straightforward for the young lovers who become steeped in the quagmire of Kenyan politics, and are confronted with the sophistication of a new world, its economic hardships and brutality, and the racism and persistent inequities of the post-colonial and global society.