Fiona Sweeney wants to do something that matters, and she chooses to
make her mark in the arid bush of northeastern Kenya. By helping to
start a traveling library, she hopes to bring the words of Homer,
Hemingway, and Dr. Seuss to far-flung tiny communities where people live
daily with drought, hunger, and disease. Her intentions are honorable,
and her rules are firm: due to the limited number of donated books, if
any one of them is not returned, the bookmobile will not return.
But, encumbered by her Western values, Fi does not understand the people
she seeks to help. And in the impoverished small community of Mididima,
she finds herself caught in the middle of a volatile local struggle when
the bookmobile's presence sparks a dangerous feud between the proponents
of modernization and those who fear the loss of traditional ways.