The novel opens in 2012, when Chris has just received word that Ruth, a woman he met while on his ill-fated trip to Kenya, is delivering a lecture in Michigan. He decides to make the five hour journey out to see her, in spite of the fact that he is uncertain whether she will even want to see him. He watches her lecture from the back of the room, and approaches her afterwards. She is shocked to see him.
We then flash back to 2007, as Chris is first arriving in Kenya. He decides to take a bus to the town of Kisumu, from which he will commute each day to the even smaller village where the Malaika Foundation is located. Chris is in Kenya to investigate the possibility that someone is stealing from the budget of the orphans’ center that his American law firm sponsors. If he finds that all is in order, he will deliver them a check for $13,000 so they can finish building a much-needed new community center. En route to Kisumu, Chris is unable to reach the Foundation’s director, Franklin, and his cellphone is then stolen. Without Franklin to meet him in Kisumu he must rely on the kindness of two strangers, Ruth and her brother Richard, to get him to his hotel.
When Chris finally arrives he heads to the hotel bar, where he meets the expat Lila. She strikes up a conversation with him about Kenyan politics and American expats in Africa, all the while flirting subtly. Lila explains that she is a former Peace Corps volunteer who was kicked out because of personal differences, and that she decided to remain in Africa rather than returning to the US. Though Chris is married, his marriage is on the rocks and he feels distant from both his wife and adopted daughter. At her invitation, he rents a room at the hotel and they head upstairs together, where they drink a bottle of wine and sleep together. Lila pretends she is Chris’s wife in order to get a room without offending the Muslim hotel clerk.
The next day Chris meets Boniface, who introduces himself as Franklin’s nephew and an employee of the Malaika Foundation. He explains that Franklin’s mother is dying and that he has gone to be with her. He takes Chris to his village, where Chris begins to carefully look through the organization’s receipts for evidence of corruption. He finds nothing of significance, but persists in the sense that someone in the village is hiding something from the American visitor. Early one morning, Boniface hurries Chris out of the village, claiming that the villagers are angry with him for asking questions and might get violent. He takes Chris back to the hotel and advises him to conclude his business in Africa if he can’t find any concrete evidence.
But after speaking with another villager later that day, Chris realizes that Boniface has lied to him. No one was angry at him – Boniface had told them all that Chris had become ill. He angrily summons Boniface to his hotel and vows that he will stay until he finds out who is stealing. He asks Lila, who has remained his companion over the course of his stay in Africa, if she’ll come with him to Franklin’s village to try to find the director himself. But Lila begins acting strangely as soon as they reach Franklin’s village, and Chris gets the sense that people know who she is. When they find Franklin’s mother, they discover that she is perfectly healthy and has not seen her son in several weeks; clearly, someone in the village has been lying about Franklin’s whereabouts. Soon after this revelation, Lila disappears while Chris’s back is turned – he has no idea where she’s gone.
He returns to his hotel alone, where the hotel clerk informs him that his “wife†Lila has retrieved his money, passport, and the check for $13,000 from the hotel safe. Outraged and shocked at Lila’s deception and his own stupidity, he calls his new Kenyan friends Richard and Ruth to help him out. After doing some further investigating in the Malaika village, they piece together that Lila has been soliciting donations for the Malaika Foundation from her American friends and then pocketing the money. Nyali, one of the villagers, reports to Chris and Richard that Boniface was spotted at a Barclay’s Bank in a nearby village, most likely trying to deposit the $13,000 check. Since the bank is closed due to the impending elections, Richard predicts that Boniface will try to head across the border to Uganda to cash the check. He volunteers to follow Boniface to Uganda, while Chris waits in Kenya.
While he’s waiting for Richard to return, he spots a van with “Malaika Foundation†printed on the side and decides to follow it. The van pulls up in front of a dilapidated house on the edge of town, and Lila jumps out of it. He breaks in through a window and discovers Lila alone and terrified, holding a small infant. Over the course of the next several hours, during which Chris holds Lila hostage, he discovers that Lila and Boniface are romantically involved and have a child together; they conspired to steal small amounts from the Malaika Foundation in order to keep themselves afloat. When Franklin discovered their theft and confronted them about it, Boniface and Lila panicked and killed him. To cover their tracks, they pretended that Franklin had gone to visit his sick mother, and concocted a plan for Lila to seduce Chris and steal his $13,000 check.
After several hours, Boniface returns to the house where Chris is waiting. In a rage, he beats Boniface almost to death before escaping with Richard, who has followed Boniface back to the house. On their way home they are stopped by a gang of rowdy young men who are angry over the election results. The police arrive to break up the confrontation soon afterward, and in the midst of the confusion, Richard is shot by a police officer. Chris watches him die on the ground before his eyes, all the while reflecting on the numerous mistakes he has made as a visitor earnestly trying to “do good†in Africa.
The epilogue flashes back to 2012, where Chris has asked for the opportunity to apologize to Ruth for his mistakes. She lets him know that the Malaika Foundation eventually earned the money for a new community center, in part through her fundraising efforts. She has almost no interest in hearing his apologies, but she isn’t angry – she merely thinks of him as a selfish, thoughtless American tourist. The novel ends with Chris beginning the long, five-hour journey homeward after an essentially pointless trip.