Raphael is killed on a rescue mission in Northeast Nigeria where Boko Haram has murdered hundreds of schoolchildren. Sociologist Bernice Williams interviews Raphael's family and friends to understand why the young American risked his life to help people thousands of miles away from his home in Seattle. Dr. Williams is particularly interested in the development of Raphael's moral and religious values, which were formed during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st. During his childhood and adolescence, Raphael encountered the political and cultural upheavals following 9/11, the Black Lives Matter movement, and changing perspectives on American history. The people influencing him included his father, a history teacher; Gillian, a Holocaust scholar; Pat, the aging hippie living next door; and Aleecia, a college girlfriend conflicted over her sense of duty to the African American community.

After graduating college, Raphael joins a group that supports Christian schools in Nigeria. In several villages, the schools have gone underground to avoid Boko Haram's murderous attacks on "Western" education. For a year, Raphael lives in two such villages, teaching teenagers languages and subjects they need to know to pass exams and attend the university. His reports back to family and friends describe his experiences.

Dr. Williams's interviews lay bare not only the moral and political conflicts influencing Raphael but the interpersonal conflicts as well. Resentments, jealousies, fears, loyalties, and affections among his family and friends play an incalculable part in the man he becomes. And it is these family and friends who have to cope with their grief over losing him.