"The four women who form the subject of this book belonged to the West ... Each found, in the East, glowing horizons of emotion and daring."

Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, a convent girl captured by corsairs and sold into the Harem of the Grand Turk; Lady Ellenborough, a society beauty who fled London for Athens, and Athens for the Syrian tent of Sheikh Medjuel El Bezrab; Isabel Burton, whose explorer husband's love for the East became her passion; and Isabelle Eberhardt, transvestite and linguist, whose love affair with the East ended when she drowned in the desert sand at the age of twenty-seven...