Eberhardt was a free spirit who spent most of her 27 years between France and its colonies in North Africa. She converted to Islam and traveled as a man, even gaining initiation into a Sufi sect. These short stories are crystallized images from her wanderings in the desert, snapshots of lives both tragic and heroic. Everything glows with the heat of the sun on bleached sand, the seductive beauty of the open road, the fiery heart of an adventurer who shrugged the bonds of civilization in pursuit of freedom. [San Francisco: City Lights Books]
