Author Description

Set in Tanzania this atmospheric novel finds Moses wandering through the remote East African wilderness lost, hungry, and about to die. He is nine years old, a homeless street kid from the port city Dar es Salaam, and he has just buried his best friend. Attempting to flee the city violence and coaxed by the memory of his dead father, who dreamed of returning with him to the rural farm lands, Moses and his friend Kioso accept a ride from a disturbed stranger: a decision that eventually separates the boys. Searching for his lost companion, Moses journeys to the regiments of a rural orphanage and finally to the hallucinatory state of starvation as he curls under a tree in a dry wilderness to give up, but an unlikely cast of characters--the prostitute Grace; the shop owner Mama Tesha; the crippled fruit vendor; and the Ndorobo hunter-gatherer, Toroye--saves Moses from certain death, shelters him, and exposes him to a way of life and value system different from anything he has ever known. A stirring novel that juxtaposes urban homelessness with societies found in the wild, this work reminds readers that even amid places of violence and indifference, human compassion can be found.