Fact and fiction blend together in this moral and historical novel about a group of Batswana whose migration to a village on the border of modern-day Botswana is complicated by conflicts with the customs and politics of a local tribe. The livelihood of the migrants is threatened when their leader, Reverend Ramoipone Mathe, must negotiate a web of obstacles set up by a prideful local monarch, and assuage the envy of a rival cattle owner. While the Reverend's immediate problems promise to be resolved by the completion of a drought-averting well, the seeds of dispossession, entrenched during apartheid, are unmistakable in this story about the attempt of two separate cultures to settle in a colonized country.