Blue Desert: A Novel
Celia Jeffries
April 20, 2021
“An exquisite, expansive, and transporting novel." —Hester Kaplan, author of The Tell
2021 IPNE Finalist, Literary Fiction
2021 Women’s Book Awards Sarton Finalist, Historical Fiction
Celia Jeffries
April 20, 2021
“An exquisite, expansive, and transporting novel." —Hester Kaplan, author of The Tell
2021 IPNE Finalist, Literary Fiction
2021 Women’s Book Awards Sarton Finalist, Historical Fiction
Celia Jeffries
April 20, 2021
“An exquisite, expansive, and transporting novel." —Hester Kaplan, author of The Tell
2021 IPNE Finalist, Literary Fiction
2021 Women’s Book Awards Sarton Finalist, Historical Fiction
Release Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-57869-044-2
LCCN: 2020917150
eBook ISBN: 978-1-57869-048-0 Click Here to Purchase eBook
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Here.
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SYNOPSIS
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.
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.
PRAISE
“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
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“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. “The desert is a palace of winds. A palace of space,” Alice recalls about her years away from home. The same can be said of Blue Desert, an exquisite, expansive, and transporting novel.”
—Hester Kaplan, author of The Tell
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“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 The Captives and You Again
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“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.”
—Ellen Wittlinger, author of Someone Else’s Shoes
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“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 Desert is a fierce, unflinching tale that is both deeply historical and uncannily relevant to our era. Beautifully written and deeply felt, Alice’s story of life in the Sahara desert among the Tuareg—and all that comes after—opens a window between two vastly different cultures that will enchant and transport readers.”
—Joy Baglio, founder of Pioneer Valley Writing Workshop
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“Blue Desert is unflinchingly adventurous, unashamedly feminist, deeply human and thoughtful. Jeffries seamlessly weaves two narratives: eighteen-year-old Alice with the Tuareg tribe in wartime Sahara and seventy-eight-year-old Alice in London—to a compelling conclusion without sacrificing the lyricism of her prose, lush grounding in the natural world, or the heartbreaking complexity of her characters.”
—Ellen Meeropol, author of Her Sister’s Tattoo
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“Though I have never been to Africa, thanks to Celia Jeffries, I have now crossed the Sahara on a ‘dun-colored camel’ and slept beneath the desert’s ‘sequined sky.’ This novel is, in a word, gorgeous. Just like Alice, who loses herself in the beauty of the desert, I lost myself in the beauty of this story of love, loss, loyalty, betrayal, redemption, and forgiveness. This book will astound you.”
—Lesléa Newman, activist and author of I Wish My Father
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“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. But Alice’s Ithaca is no geographic place. It’s the landscape of love: complex, deeply tuned and spanning worlds, a passage home you will never forget.”
—Chris Jacox, author of Bears Dancing in the Northern Air, Yale Younger Poets’ Series
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“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
REVIEWS & IN THE NEWS
Greenfield Recorder, September 13, 2023: Local author series coming to New Salem Public Library
Historical Novel Society, February 2, 2023: Editor’s Choice Review in HNR Issue 103 (February 2023)
New England Public Media, July 29, 2021: In 'Blue Desert,' A Woman Kidnapped In 1910 Finds Her Independence
Writer's Voice Podcast, July 16, 2021: Nina Burleigh, VIRUS & Celia Jeffries, BLUE DESERT
Kindred Connection, June 6, 2021: Book Review: Blue Desert
Rose City Reader, May 26, 2021: Q&A with Celia Jeffries, Author of Blue Desert—Author Interview
Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 27, 2021: A desert awakening: Florence resident Celia Jeffries pens debut novel, ‘Blue Desert’
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, April 22, 2021: Q&A with Celia Jeffries
Women Writers, Women’s Books, April 20, 2021: Imagination, Leashed and Unleashed
Rose City Reader, April 8, 2021: Blue Desert by Celia Jeffries & When in Venuatu by Nicki Chan--BOOK BEGINNINGS
NewPages, April 7, 2021: Blue Desert: Historical Fiction for Avid Readers
MEET THE AUTHOR
Photo by Danielle Tait
Celia Jeffries' work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Puerto del Sol, as well as the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper. She has received grants from Turkey Land Cove Foundation, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, and La Muse. Jeffries holds an MA from Brandeis and worked in news and educational publishing before earning an MFA from Lesley University. She has taught writing at all levels, from elementary to university and adult education. Her writing has been nurtured in the community of writers in Western Massachusetts, where she is honored to be on the steering committee of Straw Dog Writers Guild, and where she offers workshops at Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop. Visit her website www.celiajeffries.com.