Yaa Gyasi's (pronounced "yah jessie") Transcendent Kingdom is, among other things, a meditation on science and religion. However, this cursory description doesn't do justice to the full contents of the novel any more than the scientific method encompasses the human quest for knowledge, or than the practice of prayer explains the human impulse to seek guidance from a higher power.

Gyasi's book follows a woman named Gifty as she cares for her depressed, bedridden mother and attempts to reconcile her present existence as a graduate student studying neuroscience with her past existence as a fervently religious child. A series of flashbacks swirl around the present timeline, covering key events that have produced profound effects on Gifty: her father's decision to return to his home country of Ghana, leaving his family behind in Alabama; her brother Nana's opioid addiction and death; and ...