Faruk Ibrahim, a Muslim, travels from Jos to Bolewa, a little town his parents fled when he was a two year old. He has just broken up with his Christian fiancée, Rahila Pam, and his journey was originally so he could come to terms with the complexity of their relationship. His mother had died of a mental illness caused by an event which occured in Bolewa which his father refuses to speak of, so Faruk’s returning to Bolewa is also so he can find out for himself the trauma that caused his mother’s fatal breakdown. One more reason for the trip is that his ex-fiance’s mother, the once-feminist Eunice Pam, wants to kill him because he has seriously assaulted her son and he happens to be the only child of her most formidable political rival.
The love between Faruk and Rahila is stalemated by the politics of his father, Colonel Dibarama and of her mother, Eunice Pam who represents the integrative and disintegrative social forces in Nigeria. A further complexity is the burden of identity that Rahila feels being a Christian from the North Central State in a largely Muslim Northern Nigeria. The fault lines of Nigeria become the fault lines of their relationship.
In Bolewa, Faruk teaches at a Government school where a girl, Maryam, falls in love with him. He gradually uncovers the past of his mother and the rivalry between two bluebloods – Usman and Ahmed {later a Christian} – who loved her and the fratricide and devastation their love wrought on Bolewa, forcing her to flee and subsequently lose her mind. In Jos, Eunice Pam and Ibrahim Dibarama spar while Rahila, still in love with him, flounders. Matters get to a head when Eunice Pam helps sponsor a religious disturbance with the aim of killing Muslims in the North Central State and driving the rest off to the Northwestern and North-eastern States. Colonel Dibarama, with the help of his old army buddy, General Hassan Abba, who is the new Nigerian dictator are able to nip the crisis in the bud and Mrs. Pam is placed under house arrest. When Rahila finds this out, she is so disgusted she leaves home for a religious seminary. Faruk, who survives an attempted murder, returns from the Northeast and finds she is gone. He seeks her out and they are reconciled.