Point of View

This novel is told through two points of view -- Aminah’s and Wurche’s. The author uses a third-person narrative perspective and alternates the focus by switching between telling the story of each character, back and forth. When each chapter begins, the perspectives switch. The narrator then zooms back out to capture the whereabouts of the other heroine, therefore traveling back and forth between Botu and Kpembe at first, then converging in Salaga and Kete-Krachi later. This allows the author to cover a wide range of settings, themes, and types of characters and tackle a broad scope in a relatively short novel. She uses an immediate past tense and moves the novel forward in a linear line, without jumping back or forward in time.

By maintaining two different points of view, the author tells two parallel stories, keeping the two threads of the story...