In the village where Chinongwa lives, her family, displaced from their lands, are very poor. One desperate solution to hunger is to trade young daughters into marriage. At first, to their shame, her father's and aunt's attempts to marry off their youngest child fail. No one is interested in this small, thin girl. Eventually, a childless woman, Amai Chitsva, offers Chinongwa as a second wife to her own husband who is old enough to be the girl's grandfather. Chinongwa is forced to grow up very fast and rely on her survival instincts. She does her best to do what is expected of her and become a good wife and mother, but being very young, very alone, and a girl, the odds are stacked against her. Eventually, after spending her whole life doing the bidding of others, all Chinongwa wants is her independence. But how can one gain such a thing as a woman? Will she ever truly be free? Lucy Mushita's powerful novel is set in the early twentieth century, but sadly child marriage still occurs within Zimbabwe, driven by poverty, patriarchy, or faith in the healing properties of purity. Chinongwa will help us to understand and explore the effect of marriage on very young girls.