Rutledge Jordan is looking for redemption. A Peace Corps worker finishing up a monastic two-year stint in Tanzania, he teaches villagers how to build fish ponds. He is a long way from his previous life in Memphis, Tennessee - a life of legal briefs and expositions, sweaty infidelities, and a wrecked engagement. In the lush Usambara Mountains, Jordan hopes to start over.

Despite his labors, the sins of his past revisit him in the form of a beautiful young school girl named Zanifa. Promised to a wealthy, Oxford-educated African prince, she awaits her marriage and forced ritual mutilation with a mixture of hope and resignation. But Jordan becomes outraged, refusing to accept the girl's fate. And as his initial attraction to Zanifa grows into an obsession, he decides her only salvation lies in her seduction...

Now the cycle of passion and vengeance is set in motion and the prince will demand his own cruel revenge. In a desperate and determined final gesture of love, Jordan takes a risk at once noble, foolhardy, and terrifying. And in a shocking conclusion, the price of love and justice will be levied and paid.