Caravan A Novel

Caressa, Lady Teal – widow of Sir Linton and his friend to ambassadors and diplomats – has lived a long and distinguished life filled with secrets.  She was born in America, he daughter of a cooch dancer in Laski’s Carnival where she grew up to be a skillful magician and an even more skillful pickpocket.  Just before the outbreak of WW1 her ambitions mother sends her off to a finishing school in Boston.  One day Caressa attempts to pick the pocket of Jacob Bowman.  Jackob, catching her in the act, befriends and then marries her.  An amateur anthropologist, he is planning a trip to North Africa, to Ghadames at the edge of the Sahra Desert.  Obligingly Caressa packs her magic tricks and they sail off with no misgivings.
 
Leaving Tripoli by caravan, they meet with a band of vicious Tuareg – desert nomads – who demand tribute from them to ensure the caravan’s safe journey.  Jacob refuses, a decision that costs him his life.  The Tuareg, thinking Caressa a sorceress, spare her but force her to travel with them.  Caressa’s greatest secret is what happened to her during those years when she was believed by the world to be dead, massacred in the desert with Jacob and the others.  This is her story – of escape, survival, sorcery, tragedy, and adventure: of her steadfast small companion Bakuli, and of Jared, the only man she ever loved.