In a land where vast emptiness reveals the fullness of being, where women are hidden like jewels in a cave, where laws are flexed by armed military and police, where the earth bares naked to the elements, and where the road ahead is invisible and unpredictable, two young women Georgi and Kirsten make their way from England to find themselves crossing the expanse of Northern Africa and the Sahara desert with little viable money and no arranged transport.

In this true story in 1979, what unfolds is a string of precarious adventures that could snap at any moment, leaving the pair vulnerable to the whims of customs, military and police personnel, the disdaining interest of local men, life-threatening exposure to the sun and sandstorms, as well as mental exhaustion and hunger, in what becomes a knife-edge struggle for survival. It is the haunting endurance of the women enclosed in the mud-hut compounds, the stark beauty of the desert landscape merged with cosmic skies, and the trailing company of a compassionate moon that keeps their hearts and hopes strong.

Threaded into the story that spans Morocco, Algeria, Niger and Nigeria, is reflected the history and politics of a land liberated from colonialism yet steeped in religious rule and gender division, flanked by rebellious uprisings in the Western Sahara and neighbouring lands. This is interpreted through the polarised perspectives of the two travellers, one a radical feminist and one a socialist feminist who, in their united determination to survive the cross-cultural and gender challenges of the journey, and through the common bond of their female experience and friendship, find a way to complement their differences in a strategic journey across "no-woman's land".