On Kivuli Farley's twentieth birthday, a former white teacher from Nevada shows up without notice on her doorstep in Dar es Salaam to discern if their mutual attraction six years earlier has any substance to build on. But their paths diverge as Kivuli learns the identity of a woman whose daughter, Maasai artist Mvua Rain, was murdered days before Kivuli turned five, the one person who could forgive Kivuli's own mother for the death, while the widowed teacher is drawn to Safina, former lover of the artist, who is living in an intimate relationship with Kivuli's mother and father. Tension ensues when the grieving mother, Amira, arrives in Dar with a dancing collar torn from Mvua's half-burned body and plans a dark revenge on her daughter's killer.
