Across by Blue Dawson

Martha and Claudia, lovers who too often have let careers interrupt their relationship, arrange passage on a small freighter bound for Turkey. They discover the other passengers on board mysteriously and aggressively demand absolute privacy, but avoiding them is impossible and, for Claudia, irresistible. For Martha and Claudia the exquisite romance of long days and nights at sea turns into abject terror when the ship makes an unscheduled stop at a port in Algeria, and Claudia is kidnapped and, shrouded in a veil, disappears into a land where all women disappear into shadows. Martha follows her across and arid country of religious devotion and fanaticism, kindness and terrorism. As she crosses the Sahara and wanders dim, labyrinthine souks looking for her lover, she discovers that strength of character must sometimes require unbearable passivity and unimaginable violence. Martha isn't sure that she has the capacity for either.