Roberta Gately is a nurse and humanitarian aid worker who has served in war zones ranging from Africa to Afghanistan aiding refugees. Just the word refugee sparks conversation and fuels emotion. There are more than 22 million refugees worldwide and another 65 million who have been forcibly displaced. But who are these people? Images filter into our consciousness via dramatic photographs --- but these photos only offer a glimpse into their stories. FOOTPRINTS IN THE DUST aims to share the real stories of refugees around the world in hopes of revealing the truth about their experience.

Abby Monroe is determined to make her mark as a UN worker in Peshawar, Pakistan. But after witnessing the brutal murder of a woman thrown from a building, she is haunted by the memory of a bracelet that adorned the victim’s wrist. At a local women’s shelter, Abby meets former sex slaves who have miraculously escaped their captors. She soon joins forces with a reporter who believes he can incriminate the shadowy leader of the vicious human trafficking ring.

Gripped by haunting magazine images of starving refugees, Elsa has dreamed of becoming a nurse since she was a teenager. Of leaving her humble working-class Boston neighborhood to help people whose lives are far more difficult than her own. No one in her family has ever escaped poverty, but Elsa has a secret weapon: a tube of lipstick she found in her older sister’s bureau. Wearing it never fails to raise her spirits and cement her determination. With lipstick on, she can do anything --- even travel alone to war-torn Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11. But violent nights as an ER nurse in South Boston could not prepare Elsa for the devastation she witnesses at the small medical clinic she runs in Bamiyan.