But even the
wealthiest countries face problems
in maternal health, including the U.S., where 17
women die per 100,000 live births.
Along the way, several others join them, including Fineboy, a teenager who had joined the
country's militants to protest foreign
countries taking Nigerian oil; 16 - year - old Isoken, who is searching for her parents; and Oma, a
woman escaping her
wealthy husband, an oil industry employee who — as described
in one of the novel's many great lines — treats her like expensive shoes, «to be polished and glossed but, at the end of the day, to be trodden on.»