The British vs. Kenya's Mau Mau is a provocative and remarkable family and community memoir told with honesty, clarity, and suspense. The book captures the opportunities gained and lost, the resilience of the Gȋkũyũ community told through the eyes of Wanjirũ Warama from age nine, as she forges against the tide of her pre-designed and determined farmhand lifestyle. Despite the odds of an African living in the 1950s Kenya getting an education, where education for a girl is an afterthought, and where she is already a full-time babysitter before she grows older to join the field hands, Wanjirũ is determined to negotiate a trade-off with her father so he can let her go to school, the only escape route from the daily drudgery of her community.
The book shows the resilience and endurance of the human spirit in overcoming adversity despite the injustice and tiresome tug-of-war between the powerful and the powerless.