United Kingdom, present: Uzo, a twenty-three-year-old Nigerian caregiver, stands in a courtroom as she is sentenced to twenty-four years in prison for killing Bernard, the elderly patient under her care. Why?

Two years earlier, Nigeria: Uzo travels with her younger brother Zulu to a town far from home, where he must sit for his university entrance examination. Their parents, Dada and Mma, worry about the journey. Violence has started reaching new parts of the country, and the town of Gboko feels too far from home to feel safe.

      On the morning of the exam, armed men storm the community where they are staying. Men are killed, women are taken, and houses burn down as the community breaks into panic and confusion. Uzo saves her brother. But in the confusion she is captured, assaulted by the leader of the raiders, and left pendulous between life and death. Her mind retreats into an otherworldly realm where she meets her grandmother, Nnene, who speaks in cryptic parables about animals and rebellion, about a future where modern technology and artificial intelligence, and revolution may give a broken nation a new future.

       One hundred days later, Uzo awakens in a hospital bed. She has been in a coma. The doctors warn that she will live with a trauma she has never known before. But the country she wakes up to is already changing. Unrest is expanding through Nigeria, and families are falling to pieces. Her father is arrested for criticising the government online while grief drives her mother further into her Catholic faith. With no future left in the country, Uzo’s aunt borrows money to send her abroad to Britain, where a shortage of caregivers promises opportunity. When Bernard, a resident under Uzo’s care known for his open hatred toward black carers, suddenly dies, suspicion falls on Uzo. Prejudice, along with a lie from a bitter colleague, soon spin the tragedy into an accusation. After the court finds her guilty, Uzo must struggle to live through a stringent prison world ruled by race and inequitable power. Still, small acts of kindness find their way to her; a prison officer who secretly brings her books and a childhood friend who refuses to give up on proving her innocence. But beyond the prison walls, Nigeria itself is breaking into revolt. And at the centre of it stands a name Uzo never expected to hear again. Her brother.