The Whispering Trees, award winning writer Abubakar Adam Ibrahim's debut collection of short stories, employs nuance, subtle drama and deadpan humor to capture colorful Nigerian lives. There's Kyakkayawa, who sparks forbidden thoughts in her fathers and has a bit of angels and witches in her; there's the mysterious butterfly girl who just might be an incarnation of Ohikwo's long dead mother; there's also a flummoxed white woman caught between two Nigerian brothers and an unfolding scandal, and, of course, the two medicine men of Mazade who battle against their egos, an epidemic and an enigmatic witch.