Shortly after the Yorùbá take control of Timbuktu in 1471, Alálẹ̀ Òdòdó, a beautiful, young blacksmith, gifts a flower she made to a beggar, and the next thing she knows is that she’s been abducted and transported across the Sahara desert. The Yorùbá ruler, the Aláàfin, Àrẹ̀mọ, has chosen her to be his bride and to Òdòdó‘s surprise, the Aláàfin is the man who came to her as a beggar. Àrẹ̀mọ claims not to have found love before he met Òdòdó, so she’s surprised to find out he already has a wife, Kọ̀lọ̀, the daughter of King Adéjọlá, a political match. Òdòdó doesn’t want to marry without her mother present but when the Aláàfin‘s men go to find her, she and the aunties who also live at the forge have disappeared. They continue to search for Òdòdó‘s mother….
I knew I was going to love this book after reading the first paragraph. The prose is beautiful, flowing and the images invoked are of Sheherazade’s A Thousand and One Nights, if Sheherazade had been Yoruba.
Read for The 52 Book Club Reading Challenge 2025
Prompt 3: Title Starts with Letter M
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
