Patience Is a Subtle Thief

December 1, 2021

In 1990s Nigeria, Patience Adewale, eldest daughter of Chief Kolade Adewale, feels lost and unloved, wondering why her mother was banished long ago from the family compound. Her search for the truth begins bearing fruit when she attends university in Lagos and reconnects with cousin Kash, but her getting drawn into his petty thievery presents its own problems. From multimedia journalist Ishola-Ayodeji.

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June 3, 2022

DEBUT Patience Adewale is anything but. Raised in Idaban, Nigeria, by a controlling father and an indifferent stepmother, she has waited impatiently for someone to explain why the family evicted her mother in disgrace when Patience was too young to comprehend. Is her mother even alive? If so, how could she have left her daughter with this palpable longing for the love she imagines only a mother can provide? A decade later, setting off for university in Lagos, Patience revels in the freedom to pursue her quest, interrogating her older cousin Kash and Aunty Lola, once her mom's best friend. Majoring in economics was her father's imperative, a mismatch for a young woman interested in fashion and design, so it is no surprise when Patience eschews her studies for Kash's illegal scheme to make the quick cash needed to find her mother. Set in the early '90s when the military smashed the Nigerian people's hopes for a democratically elected president, this quintessential coming-of-age story acquires a sinister atmosphere as naivete and political reality clash. VERDICT Abi Ishola-Ayodeji, award-winning journalist and television producer, can add accomplished author to her accolades with publication of this intense debut novel that explores the deleterious effects of secrets kept and the wrenching choices one woman makes in her search for identity and connection.--Sally Bissell

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Starred review from April 15, 2022
Old-fashioned romance and street-level crime are woven into a coming-of-age saga set amid the political turmoil of early 1990s Nigeria. The title of Ishola-Ayodeji's captivating debut novel is something of a double-entendre, as it refers to both the heroine's first name and her vexing state of being. Patience Adewale is an 18-year-old U.S.-born Nigerian student living in the city of Ibadan with her stern, domineering, and politically influential father, who demands two things of her: that she get her accounting degree from the University of Lagos and that she stop asking him (or anybody else) about the specific whereabouts of her birth mother, Folami, whom he banished to America. Growing up wealthy, sheltered, and insulated from the grimmer realities of Nigerian society, Patience believes her true destiny has been to make and design clothes in the U.S. and is willing to do whatever it takes to locate her mom and fulfill her ambition. She arrives in Lagos convinced that she won't find what she wants in a classroom and instead makes her way to the seamier side of town to reconnect with Kash, her ne'er-do-well cousin, who engages in petty crimes with his roommate, Emeka. They share their living space with Emeka's handsome, smarter brother, Chike, an upstanding, hardworking motorcycle taxi driver unable to find work worthy of his university degree in petroleum science. Chike is far more interested in Patience (and the feeling is mutual) than he is in pulling scams with his brother. Yet Emeka and Kash persuade Patience and Chike to help them separate a million Nigerian naira (about $2,400) from a local bank with a phony check. Though Chike's dead-set against the plan, a wary-but-game Patience overcomes her own jittery reservations and carries out the masquerade required of her for the con, so badly is she wanting to leave home. ("The irony," she reflects at one point, "needing to do something unlike herself to actually find herself.") But one big score isn't enough for Kash and Emeka, and as both Patience and Chike become more exasperated in their efforts to realize their dreams through conventional means, the deeper involved all four become in bigger and riskier illegalities. All this personal struggle takes place within the backdrop of the 1993 presidential election aimed at setting Nigeria on course for a democratic government after years of military rule. Ishola-Ayodeji is deft, shrewd, sometimes witty, and always observant about the social, economic, and political obstacles to Nigerians wishing only to live honorably and decently. A poignant, revealing, and rueful tale of how much the political can affect the personal.

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