Darling and friends travel to wealthy Budapest to steal guavas and encounter a white woman who photographs them.

The group discovers a woman who has hanged herself in the bush; Bastard steals her shoes.

Chipo whispers to Darling that her grandfather pinned her down just as the prophet pinned the woman at church.

Adults across Paradise dress up and prepare to vote, united in hope for real political change.

Darling recalls bulldozers demolishing her old brick-house neighborhood and a sleeping child named Freedom being killed inside.

Darling and the girls attempt to perform an abortion on Chipo using a rusty straightened wire hanger.

MotherLove arrives and interrupts the abortion attempt, clutching her chest in anguish and holding weeping Chipo in her arms.

Darling's father returns from South Africa gaunt and barely recognizable, dying from AIDS.

A mob storms a white couple's farm in Budapest while Darling and her friends watch helplessly from a tree.

Bornfree is beaten to death by a pro-government mob as punishment for leading the Change campaign.

Darling arrives in Detroit and is overwhelmed by deep snow and a profound sense of alienation.

Darling slaps Dumi's misbehaving stepson Mandla at a wedding, horrifying the mostly white wedding guests.

Darling asks Aunt Fostalina to visit home and learns she lacks immigration papers to re-enter America.

Darling abandons her old Zimbabwean friends mid-phone-call to watch videos with her American friends instead.

Chipo confronts Darling over the phone for abandoning Zimbabwe; Darling responds by smashing her laptop against the wall.

Beginning in the shantytown of Paradise, Darling and her friends steal guavas to survive while confronting the daily violence and poverty of life in Zimbabwe. Traumatic events accumulate — a suicide discovered in the bush, Chipo's pregnancy revealed as the result of rape, and a desperate attempt by the girls to end that pregnancy. Political upheaval reaches a peak when a pro-government mob murders Bornfree for advocating change, and Darling's AIDS-ravaged father returns home to die. Darling eventually departs for the America she has dreamed of, but Detroit brings culture shock, menial labor, and the crushing discovery that she cannot return home due to missing immigration papers. By the novel's end, a grown Chipo forces Darling to confront what she abandoned in her pursuit of a better life.

The headline events of Darling's journey from Zimbabwe to America.

Darling's friends debate where babies come from while pregnant Chipo rests during their guava-stealing journey.

Mother of Bones counts her suitcase of now-worthless old Zimbabwean currency every day, her face showing deep pain.

Prophet Mborro gets on top of a screaming woman and pins her down during a mountaintop church service.

Children visit Shanghai and discover that a Chinese company is building a large new shopping mall.

The NGO lorry arrives late and distributes gifts; the children receive toy guns made in America.

Prophet Mborro visits Darling's dying father and demands five hundred dollars to perform a spiritual healing.

Darling's friends push past her into the house, discover her sick father, and all the children sing and dance for him.

After the mob leaves the white farmhouse, Darling and her friends raid the untouched refrigerator and eat everything inside.

The children re-enact Bornfree's murder as a game; a BBC camera crew films and questions them.

TSA agents confiscate the protective bone charm that Vodloza tied around Darling's neck before she left Zimbabwe.

Darling and her American family gather around the television to watch President Obama deliver a speech.

A young man named Prince arrives from Zimbabwe, visibly aged and exhibiting signs of severe psychological trauma.

Darling spots a Lamborghini Reventón at Crossroads Mall and realizes she will never be able to afford it.

While cleaning Eliot's house, Darling reads his daughter's journal and learns the girl is anorexic and attempted suicide.

Tshaka Zulu arms himself with real spears, charges at a pizza delivery man, and is met by police.

Beneath the main arc, a series of vital secondary scenes reveals the full texture of daily life in Paradise and later in America. These include the strained blend of faith and exploitation at Prophet Mborro's mountaintop church, the children's discovery of Chinese-funded development in Shanghai, and Mother of Bones' daily grief over her worthless suitcase of old currency. After Darling's father returns from South Africa gravely ill, Prophet Mborro demands payment for healing while Darling's friends offer their own tender vigil of song. The transition to America brings further overlooked moments: a confiscated bone charm, a shared Obama speech, the arrival of a traumatized exile named Prince, and a Lamborghini spotted at a mall that shatters Darling's remaining illusions. Together these scenes fill in the emotional and social landscape of both worlds without which the novel's losses would feel incomplete.

The overlooked moments and supporting scenes that enrich the story's world.

Bastard declares God does not live in Paradise while throwing rocks at the body of the hanged woman.

Bornfree and Messenger hang Change posters across Paradise; Mother of Bones warns they are pulling a lion's tail.

The children play country-game, fighting to represent powerful nations like the USA rather than their own country.

Darling lies awake pretending to sleep while her mother secretly receives a male visitor in their home.

The adults return from voting and no one in Paradise sleeps that night, all dreaming of a new country.

The narrator describes the displaced people of Paradise arriving as broken, dust-covered shards of glass people.

The white farmwoman locks eyes with Darling in the tree, communicating intense hatred before being led away by the mob.

Children watch Bornfree's funeral from a tree outside the forbidden cemetery; Bastard breaks down and cries at the graveside.

The narrator describes people streaming out of Zimbabwe, leaving behind ancestors, land, and everything that made them who they are.

Darling notices Aunt Fostalina smiling inwardly while Dumi speaks at the wedding, revealing her lingering feelings for him.

Aunt Fostalina struggles and fails to correctly pronounce the word angel while ordering a push-up bra by phone.

The girls drive to the mall without licenses and nearly get pulled over; Darling fears being shot if she runs.

TK enlists in the army and deploys to Afghanistan; Uncle Kojo begins spiraling into obsessive worry and depression.

Uncle Kojo and Aunt Fostalina's relationship collapses into cold cohabitation; Darling discovers Fostalina is sleeping with her old boss Eliot.

Uncle Kojo announces Osama bin Laden's death, triggering Darling's memory of Bornfree's dog being killed by a speeding bread lorry.

This pool traces the moments where the story turns on its axis, beginning with Bastard's bleak declaration that God does not live in Paradise and Mother of Bones' warning that seeking change will bring deadly consequences. Emotional pivots accumulate in Zimbabwe: Darling lying awake as her mother takes a secret lover, the collective sleepless euphoria after the adults vote, and the silent hatred visible in the white farmwoman's eyes as the mob leads her away. The omniscient narrator chapters provide the broadest turning points, describing entire populations arriving broken in Paradise and then streaming out of Zimbabwe forever. In America, the revelations grow more personal and erosive — Aunt Fostalina's unresolved feelings for Dumi, her humiliating struggle to say the word angel on the phone, and the cold collapse of her relationship with Uncle Kojo. The pool closes with the novel's final image, Bornfree's dog destroyed by a passing lorry, crystallizing the cost of abandoning one life in pursuit of another.