Rosemary Okafor, author of Field of Grace (Paperworth Books, 2026), a tender and imaginative love story inspired by Ruth and Boaz, will read from her work to the book-loving public on April 11 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
In this interview with thelagosreview.ng’s Terh Agbedeh, she reflects on the emotional stakes of storytelling, offering a candid glimpse into her creative process and the ideas that shape her work.
The Ruth and Boaz story is beloved across generations and cultures, what drew you to it as the foundation for a contemporary love story, and what liberties did you take with it?
The story of Ruth and Boaz has always felt deeply human to me, beyond its biblical or cultural roots. At its core, it is a story of loss, loyalty, quiet strength and an unexpected kind of love. Those are themes that resonate strongly within the Nigerian context, where family, faith and community still shape the way we love and endure.
What drew me to it specifically was Ruth’s resilience. She is a woman who loses everything familiar, and yet chooses loyalty and courage in the face of the unknown. That kind of strength is something many Nigerian women embody. I wanted to explore that journey in a contemporary setting that readers around me could recognize and feel.
Boaz, on the other hand, represents a kind of masculinity that is steady, honourable and intentional. In a world where love can sometimes feel transactional or fleeting, I was drawn to the idea of a man who leads with integrity and kindness, not just desire. Translating that into a modern Nigerian man was both a challenge and a joy.
In terms of liberties, I reimagined the setting and the social dynamics. Instead of ancient Bethlehem, the story is set in a Nigerian village with its own customs, expectations and rules. I also allowed the romance to breathe more fully as well. While the biblical account is beautifully concise, fiction gave me the space to explore the tension, the slow building of trust, and the emotional intimacy between the characters.
The themes of loyalty and belonging feel especially resonant in a Nigerian context today. Was that social backdrop part of your intention when you began writing?
Yes. Even from the earliest stages of writing, I was conscious of the social realities surrounding us, and how deeply themes of loyalty and belonging speak into the Nigerian experience today.
We live in a time where displacement is not always physical but can be emotional, even spiritual. People are constantly navigating spaces where they feel like outsiders, whether it’s moving to a new city for survival, adjusting to changing family structures, or simply trying to find their place in a society that is evolving.
Loyalty, too, carries a unique meaning in our context. It is not just about devotion in relationships, but about commitment in the face of hardship. In many Nigerian families and communities, loyalty often means staying when it would be easier to leave, giving when you have little, standing by people even when circumstances are unfavourable. I wanted to reflect both the beauty and the cost of that kind of loyalty.
At the same time, I was interested in exploring belonging not just as something one inherits, but something one chooses. That tension between acceptance and rejection is something many people grapple with.
So, yes, the social backdrop was not just intentional; it was foundational. I wanted the story to feel like a mirror where readers can see their own struggles, and questions about where they truly belong, and what it really means to stay.
Love stories risk sentimentality. How did you ensure Field of Grace stayed emotionally honest rather than idealistic?
That was something I was very intentional about from the beginning, because I agree that love stories can easily slip into sentimentality if everything feels too perfect or too convenient.
For me, emotional honesty came from allowing the characters to remain human. I didn’t shy away from their doubts, their fears, or even their flawed decisions. Obiageli, for instance, carries grief. Her journey is not one of constant faith, but of choosing faith again and again, even when it is difficult. That tension keeps her real.
With Obinna, I was careful not to make him an idealised figure. While he embodies integrity and kindness, he is still a man shaped by responsibility, and internal conflict. And even human, fleshly desires, too. He has to make deliberate choices and that grounded his character beyond the “perfect man” trope.
I also let the environment shape the story. Social expectations, and cultural codes within the community create friction. Love, in that kind of setting, cannot exist in isolation. It is tested by circumstance. That naturally strips away idealism and forces the relationship to grow through something more substantial than emotion alone.
Another important part was restraint. I didn’t rush the romance or overindulge in grand declarations. Instead, I focused on quiet moments. Conversations, sacrifices, small acts of care. Those are often where love feels most authentic, because they reflect how people truly show up for each other in real life.
Ruth is one of literature’s great outsider figures, a woman who chooses loyalty over self-preservation. How does your protagonist relate to that archetype?
I was very conscious of that archetype while shaping my protagonist, but I didn’t want to simply replicate it.
Like Ruth, Obiageli makes a choice that looks a lot like loyalty over self-preservation. But what interested me was why she makes that choice, and what it costs her internally.
In many retellings, that kind of loyalty can feel almost effortless, even noble in a way that distances it from reality. I wanted Obiageli’s decision to feel heavy. She is aware of what she is giving up. There are moments where self-preservation calls to her, where leaving would be the more logical option. So, her staying is not naïve but costly, and at times, it is frightening.
At the same time, I reframed “outsider” not just as a social position, but as an emotional state. Obiageli doesn’t only struggle to belong in a new community; she also struggles with belonging within herself after loss. That inner displacement shapes how she sees the world and how she receives love when it finally comes.
What I also found important was giving her agency within that loyalty. She is not passive, and she is not simply enduring. She is choosing, again and again. And in those choices, she begins to redefine what belonging means for herself.
So, while she echoes Ruth’s archetype, she also pushes against it. And every decision she makes in the book is not forced, she made them herself.
Your work is described as blending tradition with contemporary resonance. How do you practically achieve that balance, is it in the language, the setting, the characters?
For me, it’s the weaving of all. language, setting, and character. Making the three work together.
Language is often my first tool. I’m very mindful of rhythm, proverbs, and expressions that are rooted in the Igbo culture. Even when the English is modern, I allow it to carry the cadence of Igbo. That way, the dialogue and narration create a voice that sounds like us, even when it is written in English.
The setting does a lot of heavy lifting, too. I place my stories in environments that still hold communal structures, but I allow contemporary realities to exist within them. Things like business, migration, digital communication, and shifting gender roles are present, but they don’t erase tradition; they interact with it. That tension naturally creates resonance.
With characters, I focus on duality. They are people who respect tradition but are also questioning it. They carry inherited beliefs, but they are also shaped by modern exposure. So their decisions often sit at the intersection of “what has always been done” and “what feels right now.” That internal conflict helps bridge both worlds.
I’m also intentional about conflict. Tradition is not presented as perfect, and modernity is not presented as superior. Instead, I explore the friction between them. That’s where the story begins to feel real.
Ruth’s story is ultimately one of a woman who acts, she makes choices, takes risks, and secures her own future. How central is female agency to the way you’ve reimagined the narrative for Field of Grace?
One of the things that makes Ruth such a compelling figure is that, within the constraints of her time, she is deeply active in shaping her own destiny. I wanted to preserve that essence, but also expand it in a way that speaks to the realities of women today.
With Obiageli, her agency shows up first in her decisions. She is not simply carried by circumstance or by the goodwill of others, she makes choices about her future.
I was also interested in portraying agency beyond the obvious. Endurance, refusal, setting boundaries, even the courage to hope again after loss. In many ways, especially within our cultural context, those choices are just as radical.
At the same time, I was careful to situate her agency within community, not outside of it. Obiageli does not become powerful by rejecting every structure around her, but by navigating them with awareness and intention. She understands the expectations placed on her, but she does not let them fully define her. That balance felt important to me, because it reflects how many women live by negotiating space, rather than existing in absolute freedom.
What does it feel like to present a love story, a genre sometimes dismissed as light, as serious literary work? Do you push back against that dismissal?
Love stories have long been dismissed as “light,” but I’ve come to see that as a misunderstanding of what love actually demands of us. To write about love is to write about vulnerability and sacrifice.
So, when I present a love story like Field of Grace, I am very aware that I am not just telling a romance, but also engaging with other life questions. Love simply becomes the lens through which those questions are explored. And in many ways, it is one of the most effective lenses, because it is something almost everyone can recognise, even if they have never had the language for it.
Do I push back against the dismissal? In a way, yes, but not always by argument. I push back through the work itself. By taking the genre seriously, by giving it emotional and thematic depth, by refusing to reduce it to cliché, I let the story challenge that perception on its own.
I’m also interested in where that dismissal comes from. Often, stories centred on love, especially those written by or about women, are more easily trivialised. So, writing Field of Grace with intention is also, in some ways, an insistence that these stories matter. That the inner lives of women and women who are hopeless romantics matter, their desires, their sacrifices, their choices, are worthy of careful, literary attention.
Ultimately, I don’t feel the need to defend the genre as much as I feel compelled to honour it. Because when love is written truthfully, it stops being “light” and becomes a force that shapes lives.
Port Harcourt has its own literary culture and readership. Is there anything about that city’s audience that shapes how you think about presenting this book there?
Absolutely. Presenting Field of Grace in Port Harcourt is not something I take lightly, because the city has a very distinct literary and cultural sensibility.
Port Harcourt readers are perceptive. They are used to stories that carry both social weight and emotional depth. There’s an awareness here, shaped by the city’s history, its relationship with oil politics, class dynamics and the everyday resilience of its people. So when approaching this audience, I’m very conscious that the story has to feel honest. Not polished to the point of detachment.
Although Port Harcourt is owned by the Rivers indigenes, one can say it has become a mixed cultural region and as such, there’s a strong appreciation for cultural authenticity. If the story leans too far into idealism without acknowledging the grit of real life, it risks losing that connection.
At the same time, Port Harcourt has a vibrant creative energy. It’s a city that embraces art, music, storytelling. There’s a hunger for narratives that feel both rooted and expansive. That gives me room to present Field of Grace not just as a local story, but as one that speaks beyond its immediate setting, while still honouring where it comes from.
And then there’s the emotional intelligence of the audience. People here understand subtext. They read between the lines. So, I don’t feel the need to over-explain or over-simplify. I can trust the reader to sit with the silences, interpret the tensions, and engage with the story on a deeper level.
If Field of Grace could reach one reader who doesn’t normally pick up Nigerian fiction, who would that person be, and what would you want them to discover?
I think it would be someone who assumes Christian romance fiction is distant from them.
That reader is the one I would most want Field of Grace to reach.
Because what I would want them to discover is not just the story, but themselves within it. I would want them to realise that while the plot is centred on a biblical story, the emotions are universal.
I would also want them to see that Christian fiction is not one thing. It is not limited to a single narrative. It holds tenderness, romance, softness, faith and complexity. It can be both bold and lyrical, intimate and expansive.
If that reader walks away with anything, I hope it is a shift in perception.
