Land of Dark and Sun chronicles author Lindsey Clark's nine-month journey through fifteen countries in southern and eastern Africa after serving for three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Traveling from Madagascar to Ethiopia, she meets dozens of colorful characters, jumps out of a plane over the Namib desert, survives a bus accident, comes face to face with gorillas and hippos, trades money on Zimbabwe's black market, talks with locals about the AIDS crisis, bargains with Botswanan policemen, visits a Rwandan genocide memorial, contemplates poverty versus wealth and the role of a Westerner in Africa's future, and struggles to shift her perspective on the challenges facing the sun-drenched "dark continent" that she has come to see as a home.