Blue Desert - by Celia Jeffries (Paperback)

About the Book

Can Alice face her past? Blue Desert is about exile, family secrets, and the power of love.

Book Synopsis

2021 IPNE Finalist, Literary Fiction

2021 Women's Book Awards Sarton Finalist, Historical Fiction

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.

Can Alice face her demons and open her heart more fully to the life she once lived in the Sahara-a life she has hidden from her husband and herself? Blue Desert is a story of exile, family secrets, and the power of love.

Review Quotes

"Blue Desert is a hauntingly beautiful novel about Alice, a young Englishwoman whose family moves to Morocco in 1910...Celia Jeffries' prose is lyrical, almost like poetry, and she makes you feel the heat of the desert, see the colors of the sand, and even taste the Moroccan food. You feel as if you are in the Sahara with Alice...a strong, independent heroine who rebels against conventional society as a young girl and embraces the freedom of the desert. I highly recommend this book."

-Vicki Kondelik, Historical Novel Society

"Sensuous and exquisite. The novel is deeply rooted in nature with lush descriptions of the seemingly empty Sahara desert and the moors and woods of Devonshire. The characterizations are complex, especially Alice. Jeffries weaves a tale of colliding cultures with collisions reverberating though individual cultures as well with undercurrents of 'progress' coming to the Tuaregs. She contrasts the free nomadic life of the Tuaregs and the colonialism espoused by the British. Alice is unabashedly feminist in an age when women are bound to strict societal roles. Be prepared to root for an exceptional protagonist."

-Midwest Book Review

"Blue Desert, a page-turner of exquisite beauty, ricochets from the heyday of England's colonial power to the majestic Tuareg of the Sahara Desert. This book tunnels through time and our hearts when a young English woman finds a love that transcends the codes of two societies. Prepare to be transported. A good novel transports us to another place and time. A great novel makes us wish that the book would never end. I desperately did not want Blue Desert to end. Celia Jeffries has written a stunning book."

-Jacqueline Sheehan, New York Times bestselling author

"Blue Desert, a page-turner of exquisite beauty, ricochets from the heyday of England's colonial power to the majestic Tuareg of the Sahara Desert. This book tunnels through time and our hearts when a young English woman finds a love that transcends the codes of two societies. Prepare to be transported.

A good novel transports us to another place and time. A great novel makes us wish that the book would never end. I desperately did not want Blue Desert to end. Celia Jeffries has written a stunning book."

"Page after surprising page, Celia Jeffries carefully metes out clues to the puzzle of Alice's extraordinary life, from London to the Sahara Desert and back again. Blue Desert is a mesmerizing and unforgettable story. Once you start reading, you won't be able to stop."