The last few books by Anita Shreve I’ve read have seemed a bit wishy-washy compared to her earlier work. This seemed much meatier, it revolves around the lives of a young American couple working in Kenya with some interesting looks at the culture of an expatriate society and it’s interactions with the local society, and the book was more enjoyable on the whole as a result of covering a more substantial topic. The pacing seemed a bit odd to start with, I fell asleep twice in the first handful of pages… which doesn’t sound good but it worked out okay. I don’t want to give away even as much as the blurb on the back of my copy does, but there is a “before” and an “after” to this story and the slow start is more-or-less necessary to set the “before” part up.