About a year after barely clinging to life through a grisly uvulopalatopharyngoplasty, a restless young Andayi of the Tiriki subtribe in western Kenya makes a reckless decision—runs away from home to claim manhood before his time.

But escape is short-lived.

After narrowly surviving a deadly puff adder encounter, he is captured and frog-marched deep into the ancestral forest, where the rite that will make him a man awaits—raw, merciless, and without anesthesia. Before the bleeding even stops, Andayi and the other boys are hauled away into seclusion and confined to a remote hut. There, the wounded initiates endure frightening flare-ups, grueling trials, and relentless lessons designed to test their courage and endurance. Survive it all, and boyhood dies. At last, after overcoming daunting challenges, the initiates emerge to the greatest celebration of their young lives—welcomed into the ranks of men.

However, manhood brings no miracle.

Instead, Andayi faces failure, humiliation, and rejection—until he secures a job paying forty dollars a month. On that fragile income, his imagination drifts west to America, a distant paradise he believes overflows with milk, honey, and opportunity. But he is flat broke, stranded in a remote African village, and the dream seems impossible.

Yet armed with craftiness, cunning, and an unshakable hunger for success, Andayi knows it will take far more than luck to cross the Atlantic without wings and touch down in the world’s most celebrated dreamland—a place he has been told is so magnificent that airplanes spray perfume over its cities.