In the northeast of what is now the country of Tanzania sits Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. At the base of the mountain live the Chagga people, known throughout the region as the caretakers of the mountain.

Co-written by Eric Walters and Godfrey Nkongolo, Light a Candle weaves nonfiction with fiction to tell the story of a boy coming of age in the shadow of Kilimanjaro and his father, the chief of their tribe. The boy climbs the mountain against his father's wishes to fulfill a request of the country's first leader, Julius Nyerere, to light a candle on the top of the mountain and unify the mainland of Tanganyika and the islands of Zanzibar as one country, the United Republic of Tanzania.