Aminatta Forna tells the story of legendary Timbuktu and its long hidden legacy of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts. With its university founded around the same time as Oxford, Timbuktu is proof that the reading and writing of books have long been as important to Africans as to Europeans.
Two lives collide and then change forever when a suicidal psychiatrist is interrupted mid-attempt by the ambitious son of his wealthiest patient- a young man who claims to desperately need help and won't take no for an answer.
Nikki Blue is a dancer at a strip club hidden along a back road in rural New England. Further down the road, Alice, a burnt-out, neurotic college grad with no particular ambitions, spends her days working at a roadside fossil and rock shop.
