To fifteen-year-old Anne Burney, India sounded like a much more exciting place to live than Washington, Connecticut. And Jack Thornhill, soon off to India as a telegraph engineer, was by far the most exciting person Anne had ever met. When Anne's missionary parents finally take her with them to Calcutta, Anne discovers a world even more exciting than she had anticipated.

India in the 1850's was under British rule and, although the British instituted many reforms, these changes often gave rise to resentment and dangerous unrest. India was like a tiger burning bright in British captivity. The native restlessness culminated in the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857, only three years after the Burneys' arrival in India. In that year, Anne finds herself working in Delhi, one of the first cities to be ravaged.

It is here that Anne's hardships and adventures begin—she is forced to flee, in the company of Jack Thornhill, across the Indian Desert to the city of Multan and safety. Their party grows to include eleven children; one Irish nurse; Mrs. Thompson, a difficult English woman who finds it impossible to take on the Indian way of life and customs even in the extremities of war; and Jack's loyal Mohammedan friend, Sahim, who leads the band on their perilous journey across the desert.

Together, the children and grownups of different nationalities and religions pray in the desert each night—bits of the Psalms, the Koran, the Doxology. They wear native clothes to disguise themselves as Indians, turbans as protection from the fierce sun. Their spirits are buoyed by good humor and perseverance, and Anne's devotion to Jack and the children is strong.

But it is only after they have survived thirst and hunger in the hostile and sunbaked desert, gun battles and threatening wild animals, that Anne realizes what her conduct during this ordeal has meant to the children and, most of all, to Jack. Anne is no longer a child in Jack's eyes; she emerges as a young woman worthy of the respect, admiration and love of all those who have survived this perilous journey together.

From the dust jacket