Fourteen-year-old Chidalu Amadi, a student at Government Secondary School Owerri, in Imo State, travels with his parents from Nigeria to Liberia in search of his kidnapped sister. Instead, he finds himself caught in a nightmare that shatters everything he has ever known.
When armed rebels attack his aunt’s home, Chidalu watches the murder of his parents before he is captured, sold, and trafficked to Libya. Forced into servitude under Abdulaziz, a ruthless and powerful oil tycoon, survival becomes his only purpose.
Hope arrives in the unlikely form of Okoronkwo, an older Nigerian laborer who has sacrificed everything for the chance to build a better life in Europe. With Okoronkwo’s help, Chidalu begins planning his escape from captivity. But even if he reaches freedom, his journey will be far from over.
Crossing the Sahara Desert alongside desperate migrants, Chidalu witnesses the price people pay to outrun war, poverty, and grief. When an overcrowded boat sets out across the Mediterranean toward Italy, the sea becomes as deadly as the desert they left behind.
In Italy, Chidalu meets Lucille, a retired American judge burdened by mistakes from her own past. Helping him becomes part of her search for redemption. She adopts him and brings him to the United States.
Years later, Chidalu builds a new life in Dallas, Texas, where discipline and determination have transformed him into a professional boxer. In the ring, he knows how to take a beating and keep fighting. Outside it, the memories of loss, betrayal, and the sister he never found continue to haunt him.
Then an unexpected encounter brings the past into the present and forces Chidalu to face the man he has become and the truth about the people he lost.
Surviving the Count is a story of war, captivity, migration, grief, redemption, and the strength of the human spirit. Through Chidalu and the people whose lives cross his, the novel shows how ordinary people endure extraordinary pain while still holding on to hope.
Each character is fighting a different battle. Each carries wounds, dreams, and a story that others may never fully see.
At its heart, this is a story about refusing to give up.
DECEMBER 22 2026
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