It’s midsummer in Wyoming, and Alexandra Fuller is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober, and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel. And then, her 21-year-old son, Fi, dies suddenly in his sleep. Alexandra is painfully aware that she cannot succumb and abandon her two surviving daughters as her mother before her had done. From a sheep wagon deep in the mountains of Wyoming to a grief sanctuary in New Mexico to a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, Canada, Alexandra journeys up and down the spine of the Rocky Mountains in an attempt to find how to grieve herself whole.

After her father’s sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins TRAVEL LIGHT, MOVE FAST, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability, to revel in promise rather than wallow in regret, and who was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen all together, all at once --- or not at all. Now, in the wake of his death, Fuller internalizes his lessons with clear eyes and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.

Two Native American cousins, Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson, though bound by blood and by land, find themselves at odds as they grapple with the implications of their shared heritage. When escalating anger toward the injustices inflicted upon the Lakota people leads to tribal divisions and infighting, the cousins go in separate directions: Rick chooses the path of peace; You Choose, violence. Years pass, and as You Choose serves time in prison, Rick finds himself raising twin baby boys orphaned at birth in his meadow. As the twins mature from infants to young men, Rick immerses the boys in their ancestry. But when You Choose returns to the reservation after three decades behind bars, his anger manifests, forever disrupting the lives of Rick and the boys.

LEAVING BEFORE THE RAINS COME begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Alexandra Fuller’s delicate balance --- between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage --- irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia, Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes. She soon realizes what is missing from her life is something that was always there: the brash and uncompromising ways of her father.

In this follow-up to DON'T LET'S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT, we accomapny the Fuller family as they travel around Africa, trying to establish a home for their family.  War, hardship, and tragedy follows the fullers even as Nicola fights to hold onto her children, her land, and her sanity, all the while hoping that Africa will soothe and nurture her and her family again.