The Sinai Desert 1890 Rebecca Hawes lay awake in her tent, convinced that the howling wind was about to lift her entire camp into the air and hurl it to the far side of the desert. The desolate wasteland of the Sinai Peninsula lay beyond her tent door, thousands of miles and a world away from her home in Chicago. Rebecca gazed around in the darkness, her eyes open wide. She saw nothing. The sandstorm obliterated every ray of starlight and moonlight, making the darkness seem biblical, like one of the plagues God used to punish Egypt. She had thought, at age forty-five, that she would live at least another twenty years or so, but this storm just might be the end of her. Pity. There was so much more she hoped to accomplish.

An odd pounding noise caught Rebecca's attention, a staccato beat that joined the shrieking wind and drumming canvas. She struggled to sit up on the sagging camp cot to listen. The sound, when she identified it, was a reassuring one--the Bedouin caravan drivers were securing the tent stakes shaken loose by the gale. Perhaps she wouldn't blow away after all. "Becky? Are you awake?" her younger sister, Flora, whispered. She lay on a camp cot not two feet away, yet invisible in the gloom. "Yes, I'm here." Rebecca groped toward the sound of Flora's voice and found her arm, giving it a reassuring pat.

"Well, this is certainly turning out to be an adventure, isn't it?" Flora asked. Rebecca heard the suppressed laughter in Flora's voice and grinned. "Yes, I believe this is the very definition of an adventure!" She started to laugh out loud, then buried her face in her blanket to muffle the sound. "If our society friends could see us now .".