This novel is set in a war-torn former British colony in present-day West Africa. Craig Allan Hammond, a black American, returns to Africa to find his former love, Oussumatu Turay, and her son his son Abu. Sixteen years earlier, Hammond left Oussu and Abu in Makokota after completing a road-building project; she was nineteen when he left, and his son only a few weeks old. He has not seen them since. Now the country is decimated by a civil war. Wracked by guilt and fear, Hammond needs to find mother and son and bring them out of the killing zone to safety -- in order to save himself. Hammond scours refugee camps in the French-speaking country across the border from Makokota. Having no success, he journeys with a Polish nurse deep into the ravaged land and its violent and dismal reality. Before his journey is over, he will learn that you can't find anything until you have lost everything.