A male child born, born on Oye market day, is named Okoli. He lives with his grandmother but later gets back to his mother, the fourth wife in a family of eight wives and forty-six children.

The child learns to fight. His attack against a bigger cousin earns him a transfer to his father’s business abode. He further gets transferred to live with his maternal uncle. He goes to school and wins admission into an elite secondary school.

A civil war breaks out, and the village boy comes back to his roots and to the vicissitudes of war. As the civil war ends and the rustic village boy goes to the medical school, he finds his love.

Disgust with the system lures him into politics, and he nearly loses his life. He escapes in one piece and decides to call it quits.

Okoli reminisces the suppers provided by his father’s eight different wives and shared by forty-six children.