In a drought-stricken Igbo village, young Ekwe grows up haunted by owls, myths, and the boundaries of a world too small to contain his restless spirit. After touching a forbidden leaf that his father warns will trap him in astral planes, he is swept into a journey that will carry him across Nigeria and into the heart of a nation’s unraveling. Taken in by Danjuma, a gentle Fulani cowherd with a sprawling family and an instinct for danger, Ekwe enters a world of cattle herding, migration and precarious survival. As insurgents tear through northern towns and tribal wars erupt in the Middle Belt, Danjuma leads his family on an epic pastoral flight southward. But violence follows them like a shadow, and the owls --- symbols of myth, menace and prophecy --- perch over every new beginning.