This Motherless Land

Nikki May's second novel opens in Lagos in the late 1970s, where nine-year-old Funke's comfortable life ends when her mother and younger brother die in a car accident. Her father sends her to England to live with her late mother's family — grandparents who barely know her, and an aunt, Margot, whose condescension and racism make clear Funke does not belong.

Renamed "Kate" and relegated to the attic while her cousins attend private schools, Funke finds an unlikely ally in her cousin Liv, who is delighted to have a sister-like companion and just as eager to escape the family's rigid expectations. Their friendship becomes the one stable thing in Funke's displaced life — until a second tragedy drives them apart.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos across two decades, This Motherless Land follows Funke and Liv as adults as they each try to build a life out from under their families' choices, examining race, class, and belonging, and asking whether the wrongs of one generation can be set right by the next.