Love lives in the most dangerous places of the heart
The real world. That’s what Leda desperately seeks when she flees her life of privilege to travel to Kenya. She finds it at a boys’orphanage in the slums of Nairobi. What she doesn’t expect is to fall for Ita, the charismatic and thoughtful man who gave up his dreams to offer children a haven in the midst of turmoil.
Their love should be enough for one another—it embodies the soul-deep connection both have always craved. But it is threatened by Ita’s troubled childhood friend, Chege, a gang leader with whom he shares a complex history. As political unrest reaches a boiling point and the slum erupts in violence, Leda is attacked…and forced to put her trust in Chege, the one person who otherwise inspires anything but.
In the aftermath of Leda’s rescue, disturbing secrets are exposed, and Leda, Ita and Chege are each left grappling with their own regret and confusion. Their worlds upturned, they must now face the reality that sometimes the most treacherous threat is not the world outside, but the demons within.
What Tears us Apart
Deborah Cloyed
To debianca, and redbird.
Contents
A Conversation with Deborah Cloyed
Newswire America: December 31, 2007
NAIROBI, Kenya — Incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was hastily sworn in yesterday, beating out Raila Odinga in Kenya’s heated election. Allegations of fraud sparked violence countrywide.
In Kibera, one of the world’s largest slums and Raila Odinga’s stronghold, thousands flooded the streets, bearing rocks and machetes, chanting, “No Raila, no peace!”
Members of Raila’s Luo tribe lashed out at their Kikuyu neighbors—the tribe associated with Kibaki—setting shops and homes aflame. The Mungiki, Kenya’s notorious Kikuyu mafia, retaliated, riots escalating into a rape and murder spree. By midnight, smoke blanketed Kibera, flames licked the sky, and mutilated bodies littered the roads as screams rang out from every corner of the slum....
Prologue
December 30, 2007, Kibera—Leda
NO. PLEASE. PLEASE, world, God, fate, don’t let this happen.
Each man’s hands on Leda’s skin are like desert sand. Hot. Gritty. Rough as splinters of glass.
She ricochets around their circle, a lotto