In 1995, this novel won both the Jomo Kenyatta Literature Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book in the Africa Region. Now reprinted, it remains in great demand.

An epic story spanning cultures, it tells the lives of three generations of women. It traces the story of Akoko in her rich traditional Luo setting, through to the children who live and die in the 20th century.

The author, Margaret A Ogola, is the celebrated Kenyan author of the novel The River and the Source, and its sequel, I Swear by Apollo. he River and the Source follows four generations of Kenyan women in a rapidly changing country and society. Critics have described it as a wonderful book, it has been on the KCSE syllabus for many years, and it won the Africa Region Commonwealth Award for Literature. She also is the recipient of the Familias Award for Humanitarian Service of the World Congress of Families.

Ogola was a paediatrician based in Nairobi and the director of Cottolengo Hospice, a hospice for HIV and AIDS orphans. She was also Vice-President of Family Life Counselling (Kenya) and was involved in women’s empowerment. She died in Nairobi on 21st September, 2011.