When Sommy leaves Nigeria for graduate school in the U.S., her brother Mezie has just survived a suicide attempt. Wracked with guilt and adrift in a new country, Sommy grapples with the dissonance of belonging nowhereneither at home nor abroad. Her uneasy bond with her charismatic Nigerian roommate, Bayo, fractures when she falls for Bryan, a biracial American disconnected from his own Nigerian roots.

Drawn together by their shared sense of otherness, Sommy and Bryan travel to Lagos for the summerhe to search for his estranged father, she to make peace with the brother she left behind. But an unforeseen tragedy upends everything, unraveling the fragile ties between family, love, and identity.

Rendered in lyrical, tender prose, The Tiny Things Are Heavier is a profound meditation on migration, memory, grief, and the weight of what we carry when trying to heal across oceans.