A lot of things can feel just out of reach in 12-year-old Boipelo Seku's small, impoverished village of Cedarville, South Africa. The idea of one day living in a house that's big enough for his family is just a faraway dream. But when Boi stumbles on a story about a Canadian man who traded his way from a paperclip to a house, Boi hatches his own trading plan starting with a tiny clay cow he molded from river mud. Trade by trade, Boi and his best friend Potso discover that even though Cedarville lacks so many of the things that made the paperclip trade possible, it is fuller than either of them ever imagined. In a chain of events that turns Boi's tiny spark into a warming fire, Boi learns the power of friendship and community, and finds that something's value isn't in what you can trade for it, but in the good it brings to the people you love.