Book excerpt: An introduction to an African world that will haunt and surprise and an exquisite story told from a point of view that is rarely heard. This is a tale of two women separated by four hundred years but linked by history. Maxine a modern American woman who is half white and half African comes across a set of diaries written by a slave in the 16th century in her quest to connect with her Nigerian father. Then there is Onaedo a young woman from that era who found herself in the middle of events that were set in motion in a country far away from her small town in Igboland in West Africa. This is a coming of age novel set in a terrifying age - the age of Portuguese discovery.