By Chris Cleave
"Little Bee" is a teenage refugee from an oil-rich region of Nigeria. She has experienced unimaginable trauma as her village was overrun by oil thugs who burn the village and continue on to chase Bee and her sister, witnesses to the crime. Her sister is horribly murdered (as we learn later in the story) - after a chance meeting on the beach with a British couple on vacation, Sarah and Andrew O'Rourke. The O'Rourkes assume both girls are killed, but are haunted by the encounter two years later, when the story opens.
Astonishingly, Bee is able to escape her captors and stow away on a ship to England. As an undocumented immigrant she is sent to a detention center, where she hones her English skills, eventually escaping with three other women. She had retrieved Andrew's driver's license from the beach and sets out to find the address on the license. Her encounter with the couple will have unexpected consequences.
We hear of these abductions and atrocities (eg. Boko Haram kidnapping of Nigerian school girls, Rwandan genocide), but this story makes it human, and heartbreaking. Every refugee whose story I've heard has escaped a horrible experience.
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