The novel begins when the protagonist, Onyesonwu (Onye), meaning “Who fears death,” is sixteen years old, shortly after the death of her adoptive father, the town’s blacksmith. She recognizes that things will be very different after her father’s death: “I became a different creature that day, not so human” (3).

Onye’s father had been “dearly loved, despite the fact that he’d married [her] mother, a woman with […] an Ewu daughter” (4). At the funeral, many come to pay their respects, and they watch Onye carefully and fearfully. As she pays her last respects, her grief overtakes her, and she feels her energy rise up inside her despite her best efforts. When she touches his arm, she realizes her hand is fused to him, and that her father is breathing. Before she can raise him, however, Aro stops her. Onye bursts with energy, throwing everyone back, then peels her hand off her father.

Onye’s father was the first person Onye recalls who looked past the fact that she is Ewu, the child of a Nuru and an Okeke—i.e., the product of rape, and therefore born of and believed to be prone to violence.