A young American and a young English woman are kidnapped by a tribe in Africa. They manage to escape but the leader of the tribe is killed in the process. There's a whole jungle between them and civilization and chief's son wants revenge.

Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda, twentysomething Mina finds herself helping to run a motel in the faraway land of Mississippi. It's there that a passionate romance with the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius challenges the prejudices of their conservative families and exposes the rifts between the region's Indian and African American communities.

The story of Dian Fossey, a scientist who came to Africa to study the vanishing mountain gorillas, and later fought to protect them.