First published 2010
Adrian Lockheart flees his past in England for Freetown, Sierra Leone, where civil war has left the country scarred and secrets buried deep. The heat, dust, and chaos overwhelm him as he works at the local hospital. He forms an unlikely bond with Kai Mansaray, a talented young surgeon who plans to escape the very place Adrian hopes will heal him. In the hospital wards, Adrian meets Elias Cole, an aging man recording his memories in notebooks. Elias writes of his youth during the moon landings and his consuming passion for Saffia, a woman married to the rebellious Julius. As Adrian reads these confessions, the stories of four lives begin to intersect across decades. The weight of war, obsession, and buried truths threatens to crush them all. In a nation struggling to rebuild, these characters must confront whether some wounds can ever truly heal and whether love can survive the damage people inflict on each other.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, african-literature, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Freetown, Sierra Leone
Period: Moon Landings
464 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury
Content warnings: violence, war