Set during the beginning of the pandemic, we follow four women as they recount significant moments in their lives leading up to this point. The first woman is Chia, who is tracing through her past lovers and subsequent regrets. The second is Chia’s friend, Zikora, who was a successful lawyer until a relationship left her a single mother and broken-hearted. Next is Nafi, Chia’s housekeeper who recounts her life from a rural village in Guinea to fulfilling her dream to come to America. This dream falls apart when she is sexually assaulted whilst working as a maid in an upscale hotel, which becomes a media storm. Finally there is Omelogor who works her way to the top of a bank in Nigeria, participating in the boy’s club and the corruption which leads her to question who she is and what she stands for.
The first section is written from Chia’s perspective. She comes from a wealthy family in Nigeria but lives predominantly in the US and has crafted a career as a freelance travel writer, but appetite for her articles seems almost non-existent. The pandemic has hit, she’s alone and she is sifting through her ex-lovers to see if she made a mistake.
The first was Darnell, an African American professor who she meets at a friend’s birthday party. They were together for three years and she was impressed by him. However, she finds herself constantly falling short and even lying to impress him. Darnell is inconsistent, disappearing for days only to reappear with nonchalance, he also refuses to call Chia his girlfriend or offer her any stability. Chia’s wealth becomes a problem in the relationship, as Darnell criticizes it whilst also accepting the trips and gifts she offers. Chia begins to think she is buying his affection. Chia takes Darnell to her family’s house in Maryland to see the house and meet her housekeeper, Nafi, (he refused to come whilst her parents were visiting). The visit goes badly, he’s in a bad mood, Chia sees some texts which imply he’s seeing other women and he leaves in a taxi the next morning without reason or context. Chia internalizes this as something she is responsible for. When he comes back to meet her friends Zikora and Omelogor, American and Nigerian ideologies clash over religion, class and slavery. Darnell gets a job in Paris and Chia goes with him. The catalyst for their break up is when she orders a mimosa at a fancy French restaurant, which Darnell deems embarrassing.
Next Chia talks about Chuka, who she met at a Nigerian wedding. Unlike Darnell he made his intentions to eventually marry her clear from the start. At first she is unconvinced as their tastes were not aligned, but they turn out to be extremely sexually compatible. Chia finds herself becoming more traditional, learning to cook dishes Chuka likes. Chia is content, but the contentment feels like a kind of resignation. When finally their families are arranged to meet, Chia pulls the plug and ends the relationship.
Chia reveals that before Chuka there was a white, English man who engaged with one of her articles, they started talking online later began meeting in person. There’s chemistry between them but at the end of every meeting he backs away. Eventually Chia makes the first move, they kiss but he reveals that he’s married. Chia is angry but continues to see him, they have sex but she eventually breaks it off and returns to America.
The next section is told from the perspective of Chia’s friend Zikora who recounts how she came to be giving birth with only her mother for support. Zikora met Chia in Nigeria as children; they went to the same school. Now Zikora is living in Philadelphia, a successful lawyer but desperate to settle and have children. Like Chia, she recounts her dating history, first a Nigerian man living in Philadelphia. He seems put together but his house is a mess which he implicitly expects Zikora to clean. It becomes clear that he has very traditional expectations, he wants children and asks if she has managed to conceive before. He tells Zikora he didn’t believe in nannies either. They begin to plan to marry and have children but Zikora’s friend sends her a wedding invitation which reveals he is planning to marry a woman in Nigeria.
Next she dates a Catholic Igbo man who is childish and flakey. He promises her a “bright future” but Zikora realizes that he doesn’t feel under the same time constraints as her, namely her dwindling fertility window, so Zikora leaves him too. At thirty-nine she meets Kwame at a vegan book launch and finally she doesn’t feel like she needs to compromise; they enjoy each other’s company, have shared values and goals. He meets her family and is asking about Nigerian marriage customs. Zikora tells Kwame she might go off the pill and later she tells him that she thinks she might be pregnant which inexplicably comes as a shock to him. He leaves the apartment and never comes back. Zikora decides to have the baby but he doesn’t return to her, even when she births a baby boy with only her slightly cold mother as support.
To Zikora’s surprise, she comes to appreciate her mother and see her in a new light. Her mother reveals that after Zikora’s birth she had to have a hysterectomy, but she didn’t tell her husband for fear that not providing him with a son would mean he would leave her. He did indeed go on to have a second wife, but Zikora’s mother maintains a strict hierarchy of first wife status. Zikora gains new found sympathy for her mother and come to value in a wholly different way.
The story then moves to Nafissatou or “Nafi’s” perspective. She was raised in a rural and very poor village in Guinea. She idolized her sister, Amina, who was brave and wanted to be educated, but neither of the girls where sent to school. They lost their father tragically in a mining accident and were raised by their mother and uncle. Amina and Nafi are close in age and puberty proves a traumatic time, they are both victims of FGM as without being “cut” they were told they were not marriageable. When they reach the age of starting their periods it becomes clear Amina has fibroids and so she was sent to the city to have surgery but she never comes back.
As a young girl Nafi fell for Amadou, a plucky young man who planned to go to America and send to Nafi when he was settled. This doesn’t materialize and so Nafi is married to Saidou, a relation who works in a nearby mine. The mine is a dangerous place and filled the house with dust. Saidou is cold and drinks, which Nafi believes will bring a curse on them. Nafi becomes pregnant and has a miscarriage which Saidou blames on her. Nafi becomes pregnant again and gives birth but the baby dies after a few days. Saidou then dies whilst Nafi is pregnant. She gives birth to her baby girl who she names after Amina. Nafi gets a job as a maid, and later a waitress. The owner of the restaurant rapes Nafi. Finally Amadou returns to the village and takes Nafi to America. In order to stay, Amadou tells Nafi they must apply for asylum and Nafi must tell the US officials that she was raped by many soldiers.
Nafi moves in with Amadou’s uncle and Nafi later learns that Amadou has a wife and is a drug dealer which he later goes to prison for. Nafi gets a job as a maid in a hotel which is where she meets Chia. Nafi takes on work as Chia’s house keeper and Chia also helps Nafi get a better job at a Sofitel. Amina is a teenager now and Nafi is happy with the life she has built. Nafi is cleaning the VIP suites one day when she is sexually assaulted by a guest. She’s shaken and tells management about it. Suddenly the entire thing is out of her hands, she’s whisked away to hospital and the police station and suffers yet more trauma in the process. We learn that the VIP is a successful businessman and public figure in France, and so when Nafi’s identity gets leaked she has to go into witness protection. She’s featured in the tabloids and people speculate that she is a sex worker.
The last section is told from the perspective of Omelogor. Unlike Chia and Zikora, Omelogor stayed in Nigeria, although she has now moved to the north. She is the most ruthless of the group, her romantic entanglements only last a few months as she never seems to get attached. She decides to work her way up in the incredibly corrupt world of banking in Nigeria. She comes up with a way to effectively launder money for the Nigerian elite and becomes the CEO’s right hand. During this period Omelogor accidentally hits a young girl with her car whilst the girl’s mother is selling things by the road. She takes the girl to hospital and pays for her care.
She becomes rich but is unhappy. In an attempt to retrieve her moral compass she begins shaving money off the top, and sets up an informal grant for poor women who want to start businesses. The first person she offers the grant to is the woman whose daughter she hit with her car. She eventually takes the girl in and pays for her to be privately educated too. Omelogor also offers the grant to Nafi to help her open a restaurant someday. Now a rich woman, Omelogor decides to leave banking and pursue her passions. She enrolls in a masters at a college in the US to study pornography, specifically how it is used as an educational tool. Whilst there she clashes with her classmates and struggles to settle in. She becomes depressed and drops out, returns to Nigeria where she sets up a blog called Dear Men in which she responds to queries written by men about women.
The novel closes during the pandemic. The three women meet over Zoom to discuss Nafi’s case. Zikora has learnt the charges are going to be dropped, due to Nafi’s lies about her asylum application among other failures on the part of the police and prosecution. The women are distraught for Nafi, and elect Chia to go to her home to break the news. To Chia’s surprise Nafi bursts into tears of joy, Amina explains that she had been so dreading the trial, and she is relieved that she is able to move on.