A young black woman visits Africa on a quest for peace, meaning, and love in “a beautiful allegory at the heart of a realist novel” (Chris Abani, author of The Secret History of Las Vegas). 

In 1986 Detroit, twenty-one-year-old Angie is still mourning the death of her brilliant, radical sister, Ella, when she impulsively decides to pack up and go to the place where Ella tragically died four years before: Nigeria. There, Angie retraces her sister’s steps, all the while navigating the chaotic landscape of a major African country on the brink of democracy and careening toward a coup d’état.

At the center of her quest is a love affair that upends everything Angie thought she knew about herself. Against a backdrop of Nigeria’s infamous “go-slow”—traffic as wild and unpredictable as the country itself—Angie begins to unravel the mysteries of the past, and opens herself up to love and life after Ella.