On a bus moving across a rural landscape, town to dusty town, three young strangers are escaping with their lives. One has committed a crime for which there will be retribution. The second is staggering from a sudden loss. And the third is running from a haunted past.

These three will find each other and attempt a new way forward. But the talons of the past have dug deep and the wounds have not yet healed. Moving back and forth in time, from the fragile bonds of this new relationship to the lives they lived before, The Ones We Loved tenderly reveals characters whose way of loving is inherited and channeled into the lands they inhabit, the people they care for, and the present they cling to.

Written in the rhythms of oral retellings practiced by Zimbabwe’s Shona ethnic group, where the narrative is a call and response with the listener, this is a remarkable story blending fable and fiction, and honoring the ecstatic joys and profound heartbreaks of life and love.