The seed from which this book germinated was from Tom Mboya/Kennedy airlifts which took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Dozens of young bright students from Kenya were given a chance to further their education in the United States of America. A Kenyan visionary, politician and trade unionist, Tom Joseph Mboya, had seen that an independent Kenya would need its own well educated citizens to steer the new nation as most of the colonial government workers were leaving.
Kendi, the chief persona in the story, is the daughter of a man who left his pregnant lover behind and failed to come back. The travails that Kendi and her mother go through at the hands of a ruthless society is the gist of the real story.
The story is entirely fictional but primarily based on an historical event which actualy took place.