Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

Burning Distance Joanne Leedom-Ackerman

A modern-day Romeo and Julietset against the backdrop of deadly weapons smuggling in the Middle East

When ten-year-old Elizabeth Wests father dies in a tragic plane crash over the Persian Gulf, her family uproots their life in Washington, D. C. and moves to London. Her mother marries a British business man who has been knighted and has two children, and Elizabeth (Lizzy), her mother, and her two sisters move in with their new family.

At age sixteen, while attending the American School of London, Lizzy meets and falls in love with Adil Hasanbut when Adils father, a noted arms middleman, is deported, Lizzy and Adil separate.

Lizzys family has also become involved with French-German industrialist Gerald Rene Wagner; little does she know, Adils family has ties to the man, as well. When a member of Lizzys family is murdered in Berlin under mysterious circumstances, questions surface about Wagners dealings, and Lizzy reexamines what really may have happened to her father. All the while, she endeavors to reunite with her lost love, Adil, and reclaim their connection that was ripped away.

Set in the years before and after the first Gulf War, Burning Distance is a journey through family secrets and competing loyalties, contemporary history, and the dark world of arms trafficking.

Jane Austen meets John le Carré in this cross-cultural love story and political thriller