Blue Desert

By: Celia Jeffries

Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon

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.

©2020 Celia Jeffries (P)2024 Tantor

Stunning story!

The writing is lyrical, the story and its rhythms beautiful.
This is an unforgettable listening experience.

Great story in your traveling in Morocco

I had a hard time, keeping the characters straight and the time. It was just the way the story was told.

Full circle , heart wrenching story

Blue Desert is a beautifully written story that seamlessly takes the reader back and forth from the Saharan desert 1912 to 1970 England.
Following Alice as she makes her way through life.
I enjoyed the actor who narrated this book.