Before the Rooster Crows

Book excerpt: This is the story of Muriuki, a young man from a Kenyan village who leaves him home and back-breaking job on a coffee plantation for the city, to pursue wealth, and happiness with his childhood sweetheart Mumbi. But life is not straightforward for the young lovers who become steeped in the quagmire of Kenyan politics, and are confronted with the sophistication of a new world, its economic hardships and brutality, and the racism and persistent inequities of the post-colonial and global society. Then Mumbi is murdered on account of her activism and race, in lineage with so many of her country's historical and fictional female activists. Muriuki avenges her death in a controversial act which reverberates historically and throughout the society in which he lives. But then he experiences betrayal by his own people, which changes him irrevocably.