“Welcome to Shipikisha Club,” goes the traditional Zambian saying for women who are about to be married. “Shipikisha,” meaning “to relentlessly endure,” is also a synonym for marriage, whose peaks and valleys the novel follows through the stories of three generations of women: Peggy, the preacher’s wife; her daughter, Sali, a secondary-school teacher; and her daughter, aspiring actress Ntashé. When Sali finds out she’s pregnant, she’s sure that her married lover, a famous cardiologist she calls Doc, will leave his wife to marry her. On her way to tell him the good news about the baby, however, Sali gets into a car accident with—of all people—Doc’s wife. Sali emerges relatively unscathed, and Kasunga, the starched-collared policeman who was at the scene of the crash, takes an interest in her. His emergence in her life at first seems like a blessing, saving her from a life of shame as an unmarried mother. Convinced he can have no children of his own, he willingly accepts Ntashé, Sali’s child with Doc, as his own. As Ntashé grows up, though, the sweetness of her parents’ relationship sours as “her mother’s tongue grew venomous and her father’s temper shredded.” The poison escalates for decades until all three women find themselves in a courtroom while Sali is tried for her husband’s murder. Truths and half-truths flicker throughout the trial as each woman fights to persuade the audience—and perhaps themselves and each other—of their story. Against the courtroom backdrop unfolds the women’s struggle to survive amid the complexities of Zambian modernization, folk tradition, religion, and a political system in which victims have few rights.