Created by the clashing of tectonic plates millions of years ago, the East African Great Rift Valley runs south from the Horn of Africa to Tanzania forming a depression filled with great lakes and walled by forbidding escarpments. It is to the east of the Rift that little Willie Von Mecklenburg is torn from his family by a vengeful Somali ivory poacher causing an emotional rift in the Von Mecklenburg family as it searches in vain for their lost son. Thus begins the fateful journey of two brothers, one in America, the other in Prussia.