BOOKS

Three months after making her choice between Ejike, Doug, and Dongjap, Rachel dusts off her diary. . . They are expecting a baby, but her marriage is not what she anticipated it would be. But that’s just normal, right? Nothing real faith and fervent prayer can’t handle . . . But as the years go by, Rachel wonders maybe she’s been looking at things all wrong. Maybe it’s not too late to make a different choice.

On the day of her sister’s marriage introduction, radio show host, Rachel Eden, meets Ejike and Doug; two friends that could not be more different. She finds herself instantly attracted to Ejike, but there’s something about Doug and the way he’s determined to win her heart. Neither men are who they appear to be, however, making Rachel’s choice harder. Her producer and friend, Dongjap, also makes his intentions known, but could he be a little too late?

It is the early 1830’s, the countries of the global north are mired in internecine wars and poverty. The British Empire has set themselves up as the world power through the trans-atlantic slave trade and has started its long-term goal of sequestering and colonising the West Coast of Africa ahead of Germany and France. In their designs for Oduduwa nations, independent city-states in the south-west, they had factored in greed and the use of force, but what they hadn’t bargained for was resistance from the powerful women living in these areas.

A year after their best friend, Janet Uzor dies in a drowning incident, Pamela and Ebere are trying to cope and move on in their own unique ways. Pamela buries her emotions, while Ebere has been on a mission to find out what really happened to their friend, an excellent swimmer, whose death seems unfair and unconscionable.

People Live Here tells of Kanulia, a 25-year-old single mother, whose quest for a better job that will help her raise her son in the post-PMS subsidy removal crises of January 2012 lands her a foreign-aid nursing work in Sana’a in the aftermath of the Yemeni Uprising, the previous year. With the cast of eccentric yet friendly coworkers from all over the world, she eases into the old city and takes in the architecture. She begins a journey of friendship, trauma and rediscovery that will bring her back to Nigeria a changed woman, even though she is initially unaware of it, it’s a change that will save lives at the crisis-stricken Northern borders of her country.

Ebele wishes more than anything to make Christmas with his widowed mother memorable with lots of gifts. With his mother barely able to afford food and the harsh ridicule of his friends, Ebele is disheartened. When a strange man comes to town, the boy opens his heart and home reluctantly.

In Adoria, a small village, a farmer lives a half existence, nameless and waiting for death when a knock on his door changes his life forever. Salem, the girl with a past just as dark as his own slowly renews his will to live. Through her eyes, he sees the world anew, a land filled with possibility and adventure.

There is a luminescence of words in Umar’s sophomore collection of poetry, an audacity to employ poetic license without boundaries; a rascality, sometimes verging on creative mischief, to explore all perceptive and expressive possibilities.