The dry, unforgiving winds of the Sahel swirl dust over the plains around the orphanage. Ali, a young Chadian boy of seven, spends his days shooting marbles and playing soccer with his fellow orphans, waiting with hope to be taken away to a different world. When Laurent and Clara Girard drive through the orphanage gate one day, Ali's life is forever changed. The French couple adopts him and brings him to Chad's bustling capital, N'Djamena, where motorcycles roar across paved roads and the market is open late into the night. But Ali soon finds that his new experiences don't align with his expectations, and he is placed between two competing worlds: his native culture and the foreign one that seeks to change him. As the pressure mounts and Ali is unable to make friends or master a new language, he knows he must make a choice between his two worlds--or risk losing his identity forever.

Aaron Brown is a young novelist and poet who grew up in Chad, Africa, for ten years. His work has been featured inThe Penwood Review, North Central Review, The Prairie Light Review, and is forthcoming inSaint Katherine Review andWindhover. This is his first published novel.