Book excerpt: The Sojourners Plight explores the historical yet contemporary universal issue of religious conflict and violence. Michael, Uche, and Tunde are three friends from the Southern, Eastern, and Western parts of Nigeria respectively. Believing in unity and peaceful co-existence amongst tribes and religions, the basis upon which the country was forged, they settle down and start up their families in Gerinlafiaa town in the Muslim-populated Northern Nigeria. For a while, things go on well with them until a Jihad breaks out and spreads through the North like wildfire. The thirst for Christian blood soon reaches Gerinlafia. And so in a town whose name denotes peace, brute violence is unleashed. Christians and non-northerners are brutally murdered for no reason save the faith they profess. The three friends are not spared as they all lose everything. Two of them survive, and one returns with vengeance in his heart. He is hell-bent on settling a score, on making his Northern brothers feel the indelible pains their actions have seared into his heartpains that the passage of time can never heal.