The narrator, a 12-year-old girl, describes her life in one of the richest places in Lagos. She lives with her mother, father, and brother, Ezikiel. Her father is the reason they live in this luxury. Her life changes when her parents divorce and her mother, Ezikiel, and she are forced to move to her grandparents' house in Warri. Warri is a poor place with no electricity or tap water; the luxuries of Lagos were no longer here. Moreover, her grandparents are Muslims, while she is Christian. All these changes prove a challenge that the narrator's family has to adapt to.
They start going to a new school that is full of students, mostly boys, and is poorly maintained. The kids are hit by a cane for the simplest of things. The narrator learns to cook in the family house, and she starts to collect water everyday from the river.
The grandfather, Alhaji, decides to marry another woman with grandma. Of course, Grandma was very mad at first, but Alhaji made an excuse of the village men making fun of him that he had "one wife and no son". He married a Christian woman called Celestine who just finished university and is very young. One night, as the girl and Ezikiel, her brother, were singing with Grandma, they found Celestine's hut go on fire and Grandma running away in an unprecedented manner.
Celestine then spends all the money the family has to buy Lycra fabric, saying she'll start a business with it. Alhaji gets extremely mad; Celestine finished their money and was trying to start selling a fabric Alhaji doesn't approve of. Celestine's action results in the family having less food, the kids not going to school.
Grandmother buys a fridge, puts in some drinks in it, and starts to sell them in a go-slow. The business goes well the first day, but the next day the fridge is stolen. After many days of suffering, Grandmother finds a job as a mourner for Celestine. She also decides to teach the narrator, whom she calls Blessing, how to be a midwife and tells her that she doesn't need school.
The family earns some money that is enough for Ezikiel only to go to school. However, after some time they are short on money again and Ezikiel stops going to school. He gets very angry because he loves studying and wants to become a doctor, while Blessing gets very excited on the idea of not going to school and becoming a birth attendant.
Blessing's mother is against the idea of her not going to school to become her grandmother's apprentice, but Alhaji decides and insists that Blessing will not receive any education and will become a birth attendant.
While collecting snails from the forest, Ezikiel gets shot in his arm but luckily survives. After he has recovered, he is not released because his family has not paid his fees. This causes Alhaji to sell his car.
Ezikiel gets his exam results and he failed. Not only that, but he is Advised to Leave. He dramatically changes, throws his inhaler and injection, and keeps a jar of fireflies and a picture of a boy with a rifle. Blessing's mother claims that Dan, a white man she knew from the bar, is just a friend, while Alhaji, grandma, and Ezikiel know that is not just that. The compound becomes more dangerous and unstable. Ezikiel completely changes, becoming more aggressive and rude. He hates Dan so much because Dan is white.
Celestine gives birth to a twin. They are both boys. One of the boys was going to die, but Blessing was able to save his life by using what Grandma taught her.
Timi, Blessing's mother, marries Dan. However, during the wedding, Ezikiel expresses his deep hatred for Dan loudly and threatens him that he will bring his boys to kill Dan. Not after long, a group of boys from the Sibeye boys come with guns and kidnap Dan. The family tries to contact the Oil Company to bring Dan back but there is no action, only media and journalists at Alhaji's compound.
After a few days, Ezikiel is found burned. It is discovered that he has planned with the Sibeye boys to break the pipeline, and in doing that, he caused an explosion that made him severely injured. Grandma insists that Ezikiel returns to the compound instead of staying at the hospital. Later, Ezikiel died in pain. He was buried in the compound. Blessing and Timi stopped eating and moving for days. Timi stopped doing anything and became weak and bony because she lost Dan and Ezikiel.
However, Grandma was recovering and helped Blessing recover by letting her join a protest they started in front of the Western Oil Company to make them aware of the poverty and sickness they are causing to the Nigerians in the villages. The fascinating thing in the protest is that the protestors were women who decided to go naked to make the people feel ashamed of themselves. Grandma told Blessing "The most powerful thing is a naked woman."
Grandma was right. Days later Dan returned, and they decided to go to London. At the airport, to everyone's surprise, Blessing decided to stay with her grandparents in Nigeria.
The story is then fast forwarded to adult Blessing, who married Boneboy (Are), and got a girl called Eniye. They were all waiting for Timi and Dan to come from London.
