Keith Richburg, a reporter for the Washington Post, had paid his dues covering the urban neighborhoods of our capital city. But nothing prepared him for the extraordinary personal odyssey that he would embark upon when he was sent to Africa to be the Post's chief correspondent on the continent. As he journeys from Somalia to Rwanda to South Africa, and observes with increasing horror the routine of murder, brutal dictatorship, and warfare, he is forced to face directly the divide within himself, between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity.