Every time I started to feel some sort of hope between the pages, Mr. Van Reybrouck crushes my beliefs in humanity within a few moments, for the struggle to start again.

Amanda Brown, a young missionary from South Carolina, travels to the Belgian Congo in 1958 in order to oversee a missionary guest house in the town of Belle Vue. Belle Vue is a diamond mining town in which the race by the Belgian occupiers to get as many riches as they can before the forces of independence takes over is a major concern.