In striking similarity to Bonnar Spring’s spectacular DISAPPEARED, siblings Samantha and Anne Montgomery “Monte” Waters are at a costumed fiesta in a medieval town in northwest Spain, where their brother Cal soon will join them. The three are brilliant progeny of well-connected D.C. power-broker parents. Sam and Cal are journalists, while multilingual Monte is a career employee of U.S. foreign service agencies.

It’s July 2007. Exaggerated costumed monarchs, Satans and saints dance in the plaza similar to Barcelona’s La Mercè festival. A bomb detonates. Panic ensues as people ditch their oversized regalia and scatter helter-skelter.

"Get your passport. The globetrotting Waters trio takes readers to Cairo, Morocco, Spain and Gibraltar in an amazing human interest and political thriller."

Monte is 37, married with two children, and trained by government alphabet agencies in self-defense. More bombs blast. Are terrorists involved? Another guest at the 5-star hotel is distinguished Stephen, who grabs Monte and yells that it’s safer to be on the rooftop away from the chaotic crowd. A helicopter swoops in. And Monte vanishes. Stephen’s name morphs into Safir Brahim, and Monte regains consciousness in the Western Sahara, the far side of the desert.

Safir is not with Monte, but a brutal Islamic extremist oligarch known only as The Elder and his adjutants are. Monte has been kidnapped. Months pass, but no ransom is demanded. She accepts her probable fate and speeds things along by not eating. Safir returns and brings an elderly woman whose wrath is feared by The Elder’s henchmen. He regrets his involvement in The Elder’s plans and whisks the two women through the desert to Morocco.

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman’s BURNING DISTANCE preceded THE FAR SIDE OF THE DESERT, which, in intriguing literary contrast, involves financial manipulation, weapons and diamonds trafficking, drugs, murder and espionage. But this tale has an inspiring interconnected plot. Monte’s supportive but distant husband leaves Cairo and returns to Washington with their two children. Samantha still mourns the loss of her reporter paramour, killed in Afghanistan. Cal’s wife abandoned him and their children, a loss of love or interest. After Monte’s heart-throbbing rescue, the family all meet in D.C. with their parents. Without judgment, there’s a revelation about how some choose divorce and others overcome differences to salvage a marriage.

Get your passport. The globetrotting Waters trio takes readers to Cairo, Morocco, Spain and Gibraltar in an amazing human interest and political thriller.