It's the early nineties in southern Africa. Not far from Cape Town, a small chartered plane on its way to Namibia crashes unexpectedly. On board is a nun who is hiding an undocumented baby.

Today, thirty years later, two people have very different reasons for wanting to find out what happened to the child: Ruth Masisi, a prominent African judge about to be appointed to the International Criminal Court, and Arthur Coleman, a pharmaceutical industry tycoon from America, who is finalising the deal of a lifetime with China to establish southern Africa's first full-scale pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Botswana. Werner and Ella, the descendants of the men who rescued the child, know nothing of the complex history that connects them, but when Ruth tracks them down and pleads for their help, they find themselves faced with an almost impossible situation. Will they be prepared - or able - to sift through their shared past and find the child in time?

In Umbilical, Jane Kay weaves a tale of an unwelcome inheritance, one that is as inescapable as it is perilous.