The First Cherry

He crossed an ocean for a dream. America had other plans.

Kobie arrives in the United States from Nigeria carrying little more than his mother's love, his grandmother's proverbs, and a belief that hard work and hope can open any door. From the dizzying streets of New York to the humid heat of Columbia, South Carolina, he begins the slow, exhilarating work of building a new life in a country he has dreamed about since boyhood.

But the America Kobie wakes up in is not the America he imagined. Racial profiling, systemic injustice, and the quiet cruelty of being made to feel foreign at every turn threaten to break what the journey was supposed to build. And when he falls in love, reaching for something beautiful in a world that tells him it was never meant for him, the stakes become devastatingly personal. With his visa in question, his dignity under siege, and his heart on the line, Kobie must decide how much he is willing to risk for a life that keeps shifting just beyond his grasp.

Told in a voice that is by turns tender, funny, and fiercely honest, The First Cherry is a sweeping story of love, ambition, and transformation set against 1980s America. Inspired by West African wisdom and the courage of every immigrant who has chased a dream in a language not their own, this is Book One of The Cherry Trilogy. The tree still stands. The climb has only just begun.