Barefoot In The Dust

She fetched water alone at 3am. She was five years old.
Apio was born the night her mother died - named for the daylight by a man sitting in the dark. Sent to live in her father's household, she learns quickly that some children eat from a different pot. That some children sleep in the back room. That some children are present in a household without being part of it.
This is the story of what it costs to grow up in someone else's house. Of the teachers who pressed words into her early enough to hold against everything. Of the aunt who came with dates and a letter and the explicit threat of a magistrate. Of the girl who kept going - to a scholarship, to a school with two thousand books, to a university in London, to a programme that made sure other girls didn't have to carry what she carried alone.
"She did not know she was drowning. She thought everyone swam this hard."
Barefoot in the Dust is a novel about survival, about the chain of women who hold each other up across generations, and about what it means to finally arrive somewhere you chose.
Set in Uganda.