“I know that my country must have this dam,” Enyonam Agbeko said. “I am reconciled, though the land I farmed for forty years is now flooded. My father and my grandfather and even his father farmed that land before me.” He shook his head and swallowed quickly as if there were a lump in his throat. “But,” he continued, “I cannot look at this lake without crying.”

A dam is built across the Volta River at Akosombo in Ghana. This historical novel tells, in absorbing detail, the background to the dam project, the intricacies of international funding, the problems of dam construction and the remarkable achievement of generating hydroelectric power. These are balanced against a human problem of the greatest magnitude and complexity – the resettlement of thousands of displaced people, flooded out of their ancestral homes by the resultant lake.

The River’s Power is a book about the ideals of a people, about their aspirations, about their hopes, about their sacrifices and about their remarkable achievements.