Growing up, Jack has heard all about the supposed virtues of the modern world: connection, convenience, opportunity. But from where he stands in small-town Appalachia, those promises ring hollow. With college (and a lifetime of debt) looming, he goes with the oldest trick in the quarter-life-crisis-haver’s playbook: If in doubt, go to Africa to save the children. What could go wrong?

Quite a bit, in fact. In Cape Town, he's thrown into a backwards, lawless world, one of bloodthirst and betrayal—and that's just among his fellow volunteers. The local wildlife, meanwhile, don't turn out to be much more welcoming.

Yet something about this place keeps pulling him back again and again. His adventures over those next few years challenge everything he thought he knew, revealing the forces shaping both South Africa and the world at large.

Told with biting wit and unflinching honesty, How the Rhino Lost His Horn is a reckoning with the stories we tell about the world and our place in it, and the realities we must confront if we want to build something better.