Thank You For Yesterday: A Cross-Cultural Adventure

This is the story of a successful English professor’s ten-year marriage to a much younger Nigerian woodcarver whose motives for marrying her she has chosen not to investigate. It’s her second marriage, and she has determined that singleness is not a state she would willingly choose over being the wife of a charming, good-looking man who has grown up in a small Nigerian village and followed generations of woodcarvers in his family.

Married life for the two involves living on two continents—and, Kate Ellis learns, life on her new husband’s side is not monogamous. While the discovery is initially painful, she does not regret the gamble she took in joining her life to his. She comes to believe that what matters is not the fall itself but how one looks back over it.

When she does this, she sees an adventure that has left her with a closet full of beautiful Nigerian clothes and a vividly poignant story to tell of the vast differences that underlie an intimacy between cultures that our recent historical and economic globalization has brought into being.