Examines the fundamental question of what held the societies of the post-Roman world together.

In 1982 Grace McIntyre is living a bored and isolated existence as a reluctant expat in rural Western Kenya with her teacher husband, George, and their young son. She has made little attempt to integrate with the Africans around her. Her horizons begin to widen when she employs a new gardener, Isaac. Through Isaac, who has had to leave the university in Nairobi in unexplained circumstances, which Grace learns of over time, Grace is introduced to a Kenya, and its people, she hadn't met before, and comes to appreciate their embedded values and ways of life. Through learning about them, she...

Examines the fundamental question of what held the societies of the post-Roman world together.