Alice George is a headstrong young British woman who finds herself living among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the outside world faces the catastrophe of World War I, the Tuareg continue to crisscross the Sahara as a matrilineal society in which the men are veiled and the women hold property-a world in which anything can happen. It is a world well suited to eighteen-year-old Alice, who discovers a life she could never live in corseted England. In 1917, Alice returns home to a world completely alien to the one she left in the Sahara. Her silence about that life is finally broken sixty years later when she receives a telegram announcing Abu has died in the desert. "Who is Abu?" her husband asks. "My lover," she replies. Thus, begins a weeklong journey of revelation as Alice lays bare her secrets.
"Crossing continents, cultures, and history, this story of one woman's ordeal and renewal is filled with hope and generosity. Alice is a remarkable character whose bravery and determination are as much a part of her survival as her expansive heart, curiosity, and capacity for forgiveness....Blue Desert [is] an exquisite, expansive, and transporting novel." -Hester Kaplan, author of The Tell "In sumptuously detailed prose, Celia Jeffries weaves a fascinating, troubling tale of cultures colliding. She lures us deep into the desert, deep into the past, and deep into her imagination. A wild, gripping story, well told!"-Debra Immergut, author of Captives and You, Again "Blue Desert sweeps us into Alice's astounding modern odyssey, transporting us between Northern Africa and England, between childhood and old age, between the riveting external world and its secret internal workings. With sensual detail, Jeffries blurs the boundaries between countries, between violence and desire, suffering and compassion, art and reality, until we're aching with the narrator to reach home..." - Chris Jacox, author of Bears Dancing in the Northern Air, Yale Younger Poets' Series "This book will astound you."-Lesl�a Newman, activist and author of I Wish My Father "An exquisite story about a woman finding her place, in the outer landscape of her surroundings as well as the inner landscape of her heart."-Jennifer Rosner, author of The Yellow Bird Sings "Blue Desert is a sweeping epic of family, adventure, love and the people and places that leave indelible marks on our hearts. Told in vivid, lyrical prose, and spanning decades, cultures, and continents, Blue Des