When twenty-seven-year-old Nandera’s idyllic life is turned topsy-turvy in one brief meeting with her cousin, she is pulled from her carefully and intentionally built life in Nairobi into the heart of Busia. What begins as a journey to reacquaint herself with her roots soon unravels into a reckoning with secrets that stretch across generations.

In the quiet lakeside village of her ancestors, Nandera discovers a lineage steeped in African spirituality and a power that thrums in her blood. Guided by whispers of the women who came before her through her aunt Nanderema, she learns that her sister’s death is only the beginning of a larger inheritance and a sinister conspiracy by her father’s side of the family: a calling to embrace gifts long buried and a history deliberately obscured.

As Nandera pieces together the truth, she must navigate generational machinations, fight to maintain the love and existence she has always wanted, and confront the dangerous forces that fear what she represents. Between shadowed forests, moonlit rituals, cityscapes, and the pulse of a continent alive with magic, she faces a choice: deny the legacy that could transform her, or claim it and risk everything.

Lyrical, poetic and fiercely hopeful, Hidden Heir celebrates queer love, African heritage, and the untamed joy of discovering who you were always meant to be.

Nerima Wanyama